Iloilo ballots found in plastic containers; Marcos camp alarmed

MANILA, Philippines — The camp of former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. yesterday expressed alarm over reported anomalies found on ballots from Iloilo set to be recounted by the Supreme Court sitting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

Vic Rodriguez, lawyer and spokesman of Marcos, said the recent discovery by the PET retrieval team of several irregularities on the ballots from one of the three pilot provinces for recount in the 2016 vice presidential race was “deeply disturbing.”

He particularly cited reports of ballots placed inside plastic containers commonly used as household storage devices or picnic containers. 

“We are deeply disturbed as to these kinds of reports and are in serious discussion whether there are still authentic documents left to be examined after they were observed to have been placed in ordinary plastic containers that are readily available in supermarkets instead of the much hyped tamperproof VCM’s or official ballot boxes of Smartmatic as required by law,” Rodriguez stressed in a statement.

The PET team did not immediately know why the ballots were placed inside the plastic containers.

They managed to retrieve more than 2,200 ballot boxes from the clustered precincts in Iloilo province for the ongoing vice presidential recount. 

The retrieved boxes were loaded in 16 shipping container and transported by four cargo ships, which left the province the other day for the Port of Manila.