Robredo camp: Nothing irregular with wet ballots

MANILA, Philippines — There is nothing irregular with the wet ballots discovered during the retrieval of ballot boxes for the manual recount of the vice presidential race, the camp of Vice President Leni Robredo said yesterday.

The wet ballots were due to natural occurrences beyond the control of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Emil Marañon III, a member of Robredo’s legal team, said.

“We are disclosing the condition of the ballots in advance. We say: ‘there are ballot boxes that were damaged, wet and there’s nothing irregular about it,‘” he said in an interview earlier this week.

During the retrieval of ballot boxes in Iloilo yesterday, Robredo’s camp said four of the boxes from clustered precincts from Passi City were found to have no metal seal and one had a broken seal.

Three of 53 ballot boxes from the municipality of Dumanggas had damaged base and contained wet ballots.

Earlier, Marañon said several ballot boxes from Miag-ao sustained damage from the onslaught of Typhoon Gorio in July last year.

He said the incident was reported to the Comelec in September.

Marañon accused the camp of former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of using the damaged and wet ballots to cast doubt on the results of the manual recount  for the vice presidential race.