Dispatch from Crame No. 613:
Sen. Leila M. de Lima's statement on the looming decision of the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) in the Marcos vs. Robredo protest case

10/3/19

The PET case, especially in this age of automated elections, is mostly a matter of correct arithmetic. There is little room for changes in the original proclamation results via an appreciation of the ballots. It is either the ballot reflects the intent of the voter and was correctly counted, or for some reason the machine rejected an otherwise perfectly valid vote or ballot. This is the only logical basis for any vote recovery in the pilot precincts.

Unfortunately for protestant Bongbong Marcos, the results of the revision and appreciation of ballots from the 25% pilot precincts apparently show that not only was he not able to demonstrate vote recovery sufficient to merit any further action on the protest. The fact is VP Leni recovered more additional votes than Marcos. For him, it is a patently hopeless case.

The only thing that is keeping Marcos going is the hope for extraneous influences that might affect the Court's decision. Otherwise, there is no reason for the Court to prolong the proceedings beyond the 25% pilot precincts. Public interest is served by the Court's early affirmance of the sovereign voters' true choice.

It is no secret that Duterte is averse to a Robredo succession in case anything happens to him. I am hoping against hope that the predisposition of the appointing power does not influence or affect the decision-making of the justices, on an otherwise simple case of correctly applying grade school math. ###

(Access the handwritten version of Dispatch from Crame No. 613, here: https://issuu.com/senatorleilam.delima/docs/dispatch_613)