Marcos pays full P66.2M for electoral protest

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Former Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr fully paid P66.2 million ahead of the deadline set by the Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) for his election protest on re-counting of votes in more than 100,000 precincts in connection with the 2016 vice presidential elections last July 11.

Marcos decided to file an election protest due to the allegedly series of anomalies, scams, and irregularities that tainted the May 9, 2016 elections that led to his loss in vice presidential position against the Liberal Party candidate, Leni Robredo. According to Rappler, Marcos paid P66,223,000 for his protest fee that was equivalent to P500 each for the 132,446 precincts that was covered by his case.

The PET assigned hearing officers to assist on searching the evidences about this issue and appointed retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Jose Vitug as the commissioner chairperson. Vitug also has the authority to instruct the course of the investigation that will be reviewed by the PET.

The first part of Marcos’ petition on electoral protest was about the AES (Automated Election System). He told reporters that the VCM (Vote Counting Machine) has no “demonstrated capability” nor it was ever successfully used in a prior electoral application either in the Philippines or abroad. The second part consisted of more “traditional” modes of cheating, like vote buying, pre-shading and failure of elections. Lastly, the protest focused on the unauthorized creation by Smartmatic’s Marlon Garcia of a new hash code or program into the transparency server as well as the effects brought by the unauthorized change.