Voters in three Mindanao provinces should cast their votes again if the Supreme Court (SC) decides to annul the 2016 vice presidential election results there as part of former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr.'s poll protest against Vice President Leni Robredo, a retired chief justice said Thursday.
The SC, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), has ordered the parties to submit their position on issues regarding Marcos' bid for the nullification of election results in Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, and Basilan due to alleged terrorism and fraud.
Former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban said this has "no precedent" and that existing PET rules do not cover what he said was Marcos' attempt for a declaration of failure of elections — a power that belongs to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
Even if the PET would decide it has jurisdiction, create rules for the purpose, and nullify votes in the three contested provinces, "that's not the end of the ball game either," Panganiban told ANC.
"There should be a new election because the electorate in those three provinces must be heard," he said. "They must elect. Not because they are disenfranchised, therefore, somebody wins. Nobody wins."
The annulment of election results in the three provinces is Marcos' supposed third cause of action in his challenge to Robredo's victory in the 2016 polls.
The first was the annulment of Robredo's proclamation as vice president — which the PET denied in 2017 — and a judicial recount of contested ballots in several provinces.
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Rule 65 of the 2010 PET Rules allowed Marcos to choose three pilot provinces that "best exemplify" the irregularities he alleged. Marcos picked Camarines Sur, Iloilo, and Negros Oriental for an initial recount.
This same rule allows the tribunal to dismiss the case if the justices are convinced that the protestant or counter-protestant will most likely fail to make out his case based on the examination of ballots in the pilot provinces.
Three years into the protest and into Robredo's term of office, Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa has prepared a report of findings from the vote recount in the pilot provinces, which the PET has decided to release to Marcos and Robredo with an order for comments.
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Caguioa and Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, the only two dissenters in the new action, reportedly said the case should already have been dismissed because Marcos had failed to make a "substantial recovery" of votes in the three pilot provinces.
Robredo's lawyers have claimed as much, even saying, citing unofficial figures, that she had gained 15,000 more votes in the course of the recount.
The tribunal has yet to rule whether or not the case will proceed to the third cause of action, a matter that Panganiban said is "difficult to go into."
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First, he said PET rules only cover quo warranto and election protests. The Election Code authorizes the Comelec to declare failure of elections, he said.
"That is, in legal parlance, what Marcos is doing, to declare a failure of election — the election failed because the voters were coerced, there was massive province-wide fraud," the former chief magistrate said.
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If the PET ends up deciding it has jurisdiction, it would then need to create rules — "but that will take time" — and then make Marcos prove his claims, he explained.
"The proof, it will take time. There are witnesses that you must present... this is difficult to prove... Let us assume he is able to prove that. The question is you annul the election, what is the solution? Proclaim him winner? Not yet. New election. That's what provided by the Election Code," he said.
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Panganiban was chief justice from December 21, 2005 to December 6, 2006. —Nicole-Anne Lagrimas/KBK,GMA News
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This article first appeared on GMA News via MSN.
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