Former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban said the petition of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. in the vice presidential results would take years to process.
In his opinion piece published in the Inquirer, Panganiban said the numerous VCMS and SD card would be the reason why it would be a slow process for the Supreme Court.
“Even if the VCMs are no longer used, the process will still be costly and tedious because, as of today, the PET has not even begun the revision of the ballots,” he said.
According to Panganiban, the election documents will have to be collected across by the Comelec with the help of the AFP and the PNP. In addition, several revision committees—composed of regular and alternate revisors to be compensated from deposits to be paid by Marcos pursuant to PET rules—will have to be created.
Panganiban also questioned why Comelec should pay the owner of the VCMS instead of Marcos.
“Why the Comelec would have to pay this staggering amount is beyond me. I think Marcos should pay it. In fact, I think the VCMs need not be used in the recount,” he said.
“Feeding the ballots into these machines would be impractical and time-consuming because of their exposure to dust, water and the like while they were kept in the warehouses.”
Panganiban also said that if the cheating allegations were also true, the counts of President Rodrigo Duterte would also be in question since he won in the election that was declared as “generally peaceful, orderly and credible.”
Marcos filed 1,000-page petition, backed by over 20,000 affidavits, raised many issues including alleged “violations in using the Vote Counting Machines (VCMs)… which have not demonstrated capability and been successfully used in a prior electoral exercise.”
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