Manila, Philippines – The recount of ballots for vice
presidency has official started yesterday.
The camp of former Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
was surprised as the found ballots used in the 2016 National elections are wet,
and handful of logs were missing.
Marcos said that recount of ballots started with the votes
from Bato, Camarines Sur, wherein all ballots from 4 out of 42 precincts were
discovered to have gotten wet recently, making them “invalid”.
"They've only been recently wet. If they were wet
during election day, siguro natuyo na iyun -- hindi naman siguro 2 years na
basa iyun. May nagbasa," Marcos told the media.
Meanwhile, in response to the allegations given by Marcos
camp, the counsel of Vice President Leni Rebredo – Atty. Romulo Macalintal dismissed
it and called the statement “fake news”.
"Iyung sinasabi ni Mr. Marcos na anomaly, fake news
iyun -- hindi totoo," Macalintal told the reporters.
He added that those wet ballots were damaged due to typhoons
and floods, and this is not something to worry about since the automated poll
system stores back up images of the ballots.
"Laging sinasabi ng natalo na sila ay nadaya. Dapat
palitan na natin ang konsepto na ito... Hindi ba puwedeng mangyari na iyung
nanalo ang siyang nadaya at iyung mandaraya, hindi sapat ang kaniyang nagawa
para ma-overcome ang vote lead ng nanalo?" Macalintal added.
Furthermore, Macalintal also said that Bongbong Marcos will
not win in his recount dispute against Robredo by just claiming that the undervotes
belonged to him.
In an interview with CNN, Marcos camp spokesperson Vic Rodriguez
said that there were at least 290, 000 undervote in Camarines Sur and Iloilo –
which are believed to be more than enough to overcome the winning margin 263,473
votes of Robredo.
“I’m very, very confident that we won’t lose this case
because with due respect, if they will only rely on undervotes, that’s not a
ground for [an]election protest because undervotes happen due to the voters’
choice not to vote for a vice presidential candidate or [of]an error from a
voter because the shading that was made on the ballot did not reach the shade
threshold required by the Comelec. There’s also the overvote wherein a voter
voted more than the required number of candidates for a position, like voting
two or three for Vice President, which won’t be counted [by the vote counting
machine],” Macalintal said.
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