Recount of 2016 vice presidential race set next week

March 27, 2018

The Supreme Court, acting as Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), will recount  votes to determine who between Vice President Leni Robredo and former Senator Ferdinand Marcos won in 2016 elections. The PET’s supervised revision of ballots or manual recount of votes will start on April 2 for the resolution of the election protest filed by Marcos against Robredo. This will be the first recount of votes to be conducted by the PET under the 1987 Constitution. Earlier poll protests involving the 2004 race between former President Gloria Macapagal - Arroyo and the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., 2004 contest between former Vice President Noli De Castro and senator Loren Legarda and the 2010 race between former Vice President Jejomar Binay and former senator Mar Roxas did not reach recounting of votes. The recount to be done at the gym of the SC-Court of Appeals building would cover a total of 5,418 clustered precincts in Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental. As a prelude to the revision of votes, the PET opened the tribunal for ocular inspection to members of the media on Tuesday, but stressed they would not be allowed to cover the recount. The recount would be conducted daily from Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. by 50 revision teams each composed of three members - a head from the PET and one representative each from the camps of Marcos and Robredo. Under the PET rules, revision of votes would cover verifying physical count of ballots, recount votes of parties, recording objections and claims, and marking of the contested ballots. The tribunal also created an ad hoc committee composed of three lawyers - Jose Lemuel Arenas, Edgar Aricheta and Ma. Carina Cunanan - that would supervise the proceedings. Arenas said the PET is  keeping about 1,400 ballot boxes from Camarines Sur, which would first undergo recount next week. The other ballot boxes are with the Commission on Elections due to storage issues. Arenas said after recounting the first 1,400 ballot boxes, the PET will receive the other ballot boxes from Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental. The ballot recount, as order by the Tribunal, would cover 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. Marcos filed the protest on June 29 2016, claiming that the camp of Robredo cheated in the automated polls in the May 2016 national polls. 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. DMS