Former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos wants to impress his political followers by filing, in the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, an electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo. He is asking for a manual recount of votes cast for him and Robredo in 36,465 precincts.
In the 2016 election for vice president, Robredo garnered 14,418,817 votes and Marcos got 14,155,344 votes. The question is: Would a recount change those numbers in Marcos’ favor even as those numbers had been all accounted for in the official canvassing that led to the proclamation of Robredo as the winning candidate for vice president?
In his complaint, Marcos alleges that the automated counting of the votes was manipulated to reduce his votes. Yet he gathered no evidence of the alleged fraud; he just relied on the notion that his lead in preelection surveys could lead him to victory in the actual election. With supporters and loyalists at every protest rally, Marcos denounced the Vice President as a nonentity, a pretender to the high position she now occupies.
Then came the threat of impeachment from several the administration allies, citing an “impeachable offense” she supposedly committed for taking a position critical of President Duterte who admittedly is an admirer of the Marcoses.
Here, today, we are witnesses to the spectacle of a disgraced dictatorship clawing its way back to power.
NESTY REYES,
Molino 2, Bacoor City