Marcos: Some ballots wet, audit logs missing in Robredo stronghold

Former senator Bongbong Marcos talks to the media in front of the Supreme Court during the recount of ballots for the previous vice presidential race in Manila on Monday. George Calvelo, ABS CBN News

Some ballots used in the 2016 elections in the home province of Vice President Leni Robredo were doused recently while several audit logs disappeared, former Senator Ferdinand Marcos said Monday.

Marcos made the statement as the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, began a manual recount of votes that he sought to contest his loss to Robredo in the vice presidential race.

The recount started with votes from Bato, Camarines Sur, where all ballots from 4 of the total 42 voting precincts were discovered to have gotten wet recently, making them "illegible", said Marcos.

"They've only been recently wet. If they were wet during election day, siguro natuyo na iyun -- hindi naman siguro 2 years na basa iyun. May nagbasa," Marcos told reporters.

(If they were wet during election day, they would have been dry by now -- they could not be damp for 2 years. Someone drenched them.)

Robredo was representative of Camarines Sur from 2013 to 2016.

Thirty-eight precincts in Bato town also had missing audit logs, which would have shown the time that the votes were transmitted, said Marcos.

"Clearly, somebody, binuksan ang ballot box, kinuha ang audit log bago ini-seal ulit," he alleged.

(Clearly, somebody opened the ballot box, took the audit log and re-sealed it.)

"We're going to have to find a way to recover those audit logs somehow... Baka naman (perhaps) it's possible that those audit logs are still in the database of some other computer," he added.

Marcos, 60, had claimed "massive cheating" caused him to lose to Robredo in the 2016 vice-presidential race by some 260,000 votes.

Victory in Marcos' poll protest would cement his family's remarkable political comeback, 31 years after a "People Power" revolution saw millions of people take to the streets to end his father's 20-year rule.