THE camp of former Sen. Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has questioned the presence of data in the secure digital cards sourced from unused vote counting machines (VCMs).
Marcos’s lawyer Victor Rodriguez said such discovery is proof of poll fraud during the May 2016 national and local elections.
Rodriguez made the claim after the ongoing decryption of the SD cards from unused VCMs at the Commission on Elections main office showed 13 of the 26 SD cards were found to have folders containing data.
Rodriguez insisted the presence of the said data only proves the Marcos camp claim that massive fraud attended the last elections.
The Comelec immediately downplayed the claim of Marcos camp.
In a brief statement, Comelec Spokesman James B. Jimenez said that, while it is unsurprising that the camp of the losing vice-presidential candidate would make such claims, the poll body cannot agree with the Marcos camp’s conclusion.
“The statements [of the Marcos camp’] appear to be speculative in character and are, unsurprisingly, consistent with their theory. However, this does not mean they are accurate,” Jimenez said.
“This is a live case. And so any comment outside of that forum is potentially inappropriate,” he added.
In the last vice-presidential race, Vice President Maria Leonor G. Robredo was able to edge Marcos after getting 14,418,817 votes, compared to the latter’s 14,155,344 votes.
This subsequently resulted in Marcos filing an election protest before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.