MANILA — The Supreme Court (SC), sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), is set to conduct an inspection of the venue where the revision of votes for the Marcos-Robredo electoral protest will be held on Tuesday.
The SC-Public Information Office said the inspection, scheduled at 10:30 a.m., will be led by PET Clerk of Court and SC En Banc Clerk of Court, lawyer Edgar Aricheta, at the gymnasium at the 5th Floor of the SC-CA Building on Padre Faura in Manila.
The Tribunal is set to start the recount of the votes on April 2.
The recount was initially scheduled in February but was later reset to March 19.
The ballot recount covers the three pilot provinces of Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental, which were chosen by Marcos as the best provinces where he could prove the irregularities he cited in his poll protest.
Earlier, both camps agreed to withdraw all the motions they had filed before the PET to be able to proceed with the recount.
Marcos filed the protest on June 29 2016, claiming that the camp of Robredo cheated in the automated polls in May that year.
In his protest, Marcos contested the results from 132,446 precincts in 39,221 clusters, covering 27 provinces and cities.
In his preliminary conference briefing, Marcos also sought for a recount in Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.
Robredo filed her answer in August last year and also submitted a counter-protest, questioning the results from more than 30,000 polling precincts in several provinces where Marcos won.
She also sought the dismissal of the protest for lack of merit and jurisdiction of the PET.
The high tribunal, in a ruling earlier this year, junked Robredo’s plea and proceeded with the case after finding the protest sufficient in form and substance.
Robredo won the vice presidential race in the May 2016 polls with 14,418,817 votes or 263,473 more than Marcos’ 14,155,344 votes. (PNA)
