Chief Justice Diosdado Peralta is optimistic that the election protest of former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. will not be overtaken by the filing of certificates of candidacy in October next year. 

“The Supreme Court would like that all election cases should be terminated before the end of the term,” he said during an online press conference last Friday.

Marcos is contesting his loss to Vice President Maria Leonora “Leni” Robredo, citing alleged irregularities in the conduct of the 2016 elections that also hoisted Rodrigo Duterte to the presidency.

The senators who were proclaimed at the same polls are deep into the second half of their terms of office. Local elective positions are currently occupied on the mandate of the 2019 elections. Politicians are gearing up for the next battle with just a year before the filing of certificates of candidacy.

The contest for the vice presidency is fast becoming a non-issue, its current relevance buoyed only by the fact that it continues to be a pending case before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

The protest could have been dismissed by the Supreme Court as early as a year ago, in keeping with the letter and intent of the rules governing election protests.

Robredo was proclaimed vice president with a lead of 263,473 votes over Marcos. That is a slim margin in a national election and Marcos had hoped that a recount in what he thought were areas where he was cheated would result in a substantial recovery that could convince the tribunal to proceed further with his protest.

The rules of the PET allow a protestant to demonstrate his claims in a maximum of three provinces only. After these pilot areas, the tribunal may decide to examine more ballots elsewhere if there is substantial recovery, or just dismiss the protest if there is no such recovery because to go further would only be a waste of time and effort.

Marcos staked his claim in Robredo’s bailiwicks, likely speculating that he could eat into her big leads in these provinces. A recount was started in April 2018 covering election precincts chosen by Marcos, i.e., Iloilo, Negros Oriental and Camarines Sur.

Alas, the result was not a decrease but a net increase of more than 15,000 votes in favor of Robredo. In October 2019 last year, the PET saw Robredo’s lead grow from 263,473 to a total of 278,566 votes after it concluded the recount in the pilot provinces.

Not only did this show that there was no cheating, it also bared a grave miscalculation on the part of Marcos. He thought that guesswork would yield positive results in these areas where he got beaten the worst, not thinking that the law of probabilities would confirm the trend in favor of Robredo.

If the counting machines missed out on a few of the shadings in the ballots in these provinces, it was likelier that those uncounted votes were in favor of Robredo rather than Marcos because, precisely, of the trending earlier validated in the counted votes.

It was an epic fail, especially in the context of tens of millions of pesos and countless man-hours spent over this protest. Yet the PET, with only two Justices disagreeing, did not dismiss the protest at that stage despite its own rules saying that sampling is limited to the three provinces identified by the protestant.

What is left of the Marcos protest is his demand for the annulment of election results for vice president in the provinces of Basilan, Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur. He claims that voters were terrorized, intimidated and harassed in those areas during the 2016 elections.

This is perplexing considering that the Marcos family is openly supportive of President Duterte who in fact led with more votes against Robredo’s party-mate Mar Roxas in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

It was a Duterte-Robredo victory in that region. Their names are contained in one ballot. The theory appears to be that of selective terrorism and harassment.

The Commission on Elections has been directed to report if there were petitions filed for failure of elections in these remaining contested provinces.

What we know is that Jim Hataman-Salliman is on his second term as Basilan Governor since the 2016 elections, Esmael Mangudadatu is now second district congressman after three terms as Maguindanao governor that started in 2010, and Mamintal Alonto Adiong is now governor of Lanao del Sur after succeeding his mother Soraya who was elected in 2016.

Given those circumstances, any failure to elect might be difficult to report, much less substantiate. And time is fast running out on the Marcos protest./WDJ