IT’S disturbing on several levels that a lawyer of Vice President Maria Leonor Robredo has declared that former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. should just accept his supposed loss in the 2016 elections in order to save the taxpayers some money. But on this day, when Robredo and her Yellow confederates are supposed to renew their commitment to righteousness and all the other virtues they have arrogated unto themselves which they say were trampled on when Martial Law was imposed in 1972, it is important to contrast this strange position of the vice president on the Marcos protest with the sort of democratic and legal ideals that they would gladly give their lives to uphold.
First of all, I find it hard to understand why protesting Robredo’s alleged victory in the last elections, if done through the proper legal channels, is wrong. Marcos, after all, has not done anything illegal by going to the Presidential Electoral Tribunal to contest Robredo’s proclamation, but has merely exercised his right to do so under the law.
It would be so easy, for instance, for Marcos to go beyond what the law tells him to do, like taking to the streets as the Yellows are wont to do when they feel aggrieved. But Marcos has displayed remarkable (and often exasperating) restraint by adhering to the proper legal procedure, which has not been kind to his cause by proceeding at its usual glacial pace.
More than two years have passed since Marcos filed his protest and while the recount has finally begun to cover the first of three protested provinces, at the current pace, the six years allotted for the vice president’s term will surely be done before it is resolved. The delay can by no means be blamed on the protestant, who has constantly asked the PET to resolve the various motions filed by Robredo’s lawyers to speed up the case.
Thus, if it is true as Robredo’s lawyer alleged that the ballot boxes covered by the protest cannot be used in the 2019 polls because of the case, thus forcing the government to purchase of new ones, that is entirely the Vice President’s fault. If Robredo and her legal team had not swamped the PET with motion after motion in their bid to delay the proceedings, perhaps by now the ballot boxes in question would already have been freed up for reuse next year.
In any case, the ballot boxes covered by the protest would perhaps not have been rendered unusable if they had not been mysteriously damaged by water, battery fluid and other unusual substances found in them after they were used in Robredo’s home province. If the perpetrators in the reported bid to make the physical ballots unreadable had not ruined those boxes, perhaps there would be no need to purchase new ones.
Furthermore, it is also telling that Robredo’s lawyer focused on ballot boxes, because he could certainly not say that the Marcos protest was using up human resources that could otherwise be deployed for other purposes. The people employed by the PET are full-time government employees, after all, who would need to be paid their wages, protest or no protest.
And then there is also the fact, left unmentioned by Robredo’s lawyer, that the law provides that Marcos pay for his protest. Whatever costs incurred as a result of the protest are withdrawn from funds already paid by Marcos more than a year ago, when the PET mysteriously demanded that the former senator produce them on Holy Week, when banks were shut down and raising cash (the only method of payment allowed) was hard to produce.
(Speaking of funds to pay for a protest, Robredo has also filed a counter-protest against Marcos as part of her dilatory legal strategy. But up to now, when Marcos has paid the millions the PET required him to come up with for his own protest, it is unclear if Robredo has completely coughed up the money for her counter-suit, as the law requires.)
The indisputable fact of Marcos paying his way has, I think, forced Robredo and her lawyers to focus on the occupied ballot boxes, since they cannot very well say that the protest and its accompanying recount is costing the taxpayer anything. It is not, and they know this very well.
All of which leads us right back to the advice of Robredo’s lawyer that Marcos simply abandon his protest because, after all, he should accept that he lost in 2016. This is the biggest lie that the vice president and her advocates want us to accept as gospel, even if there is simply no proof of it to be found.
If the positions had been reversed and it was Robredo protesting a Marcos victory, I wonder how she and her backers would take that sort of advice. I can imagine all the Yellows crying to high heavens, with their friendly religious leaders at their side, about the injustice of it all.
How can the people who up to now cannot get over legally resolved cases where the verdict went against them be expected to give up when something like an election protest has not yet been ruled upon by competent authorities like the PET? On this anniversary of the martial law declaration, for example, how many Yellows still cannot accept that the late elder Marcos has been allowed by no less than the Supreme Court to be buried at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani?
But this has always been a chronic problem with Robredo and her gang of Yellows. They can always be expected to hold contradictory beliefs, depending on whether they or their perceived political opponents stand to benefit.
Thus, with extremely straight faces, they can ask Bongbong Marcos to abandon his perfectly legal protest, even if they promise to fight to the bitter end court rulings, laws or any other legal declarations that have long been settled if these go against them. The appeal to saving government resources is just a cynical justification after the fact, since they had to find an excuse to demand that Marcos withdraw.
The only good thing about this latest broadside from the Robredo camp is that it fools no one except perhaps Robredo and her camp followers themselves. Most people can already see through this self-serving Robredo ploy and give it no more thought than they would any politician’s outburst intended to benefit the politician himself.
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