Bongbong Marcos’ camp was not lying about the irregularities his lawyers and revisors found during the manual count. These were relayed to media even when all these irregularities found in the documents and ballot boxes were being dismissed by the camp of Vice President Leni Robredo as fake claims.

The irregularities are now proved to have basis as the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), has ordered officials of the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) in Camarines Sur to explain the irregularities in ballots from the 2016 vice presidential polls.

Camarines is a known bailiwick of Robredo whose victory in the vice presidential race is being questioned by Marcos Jr.

The PET issued notices of resolution last month directing several officials of Tinambac town, Tigaon town and Iriga City to explain the irregularities found by revisors.

PET wants the election officials to explain the incident report dated May 25 on the clustered Precinct No. 36 in Barangay Lupi, Tinambac, which stated that “4 black zip ties used to seal the ballot box instead of Comelec red plastic seals; plastic seals found inside ballot box cannot be found; election return envelopes not inside ballot box, cannot be found; envelopes for MOV (minutes of voting) and torn ballots appear to have been previously opened, and Voter’s Receipt box is missing.”

The Tribunal also directed the BEI in Iriga City, also in Camarines Sur, to explain why there are two MOV inside the ballot box.

What the obvious answer to all these discovered irregularities is that they serve as proof that election cheating occurred, both with the big help of the highly questionable Smartmatic cheating machines, as well as the Commission on Elections officers who ensured the ballots would be unreadable, lost, waterlogged and all other schemes done to hide the cheating done in the manual count.

Part of the reason is the suspicion the BEI and other Comelec officials had to resort to ensuring the cheating would not be discovered was for them to quickly destroy the “evidence” of the ballot cheating which was a wrong move on their part.

But the cover-up by making the ballots unreadable, or replaced with fake ones, or making these ballot boxes waterlogged, was done in a rush, mainly because none of these Comelec officers/officials must have expected that Marcos’ protest against Robredo was not going to reach this stage where the PET questions the blatant ballot irregularities.

Other presidential and vice presidential protests never went this far as the cost for such protests is usually unaffordable and the PET usually takes a long time to resolve such cases, with protestants junking their protests, especially when election time rolls in.

Not this time though. Bongbong Marcos wants to prove to the electorate that it was he who had won the vice presidency and was cheated of his victory.

The “miracles” Smartmatic wrought to cheat Marcos whose votes were already in the millions came when overnight, Marcos lost his big lead and suddenly, in the dead of the night, millions in automated vote count of Marcos vanished while Robredo’s votes poured in.

The explanation of the Smartmatic officer was that even as he and a Comelec personnel were caught manipulating the poll count of the two candidates, they claimed that which they did was merely a “cosmetic” change of the letter “n” to the Spanish “ñ” which was really such a lame excuse for fiddling as there was no candidate that had a name or family that spelled with an ñ.

What was also highly questionable was the fact then Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista even absolved the Smartmatic officer, agreeing with him that, indeed, the fiddling done was for cosmetic purposes. Yet Bautista never brought out the fact that Smartmatic could not have opened the machine since there were two codes, one of which was known only to the Comelec chief, and the other was Smartmatic’s code. For them to work the server, even on claims of “cosmetic change” as an excuse, the two codes would have been needed.

This means Bautista may have given his code to Smartmatic without him around for the cheating to proceed.

The Marcos protest and the PET’s move to have the election officers and officials explain may clarify the obvious cheating done to get Robredo to win.

This is not to say that Robredo cheated to win. She is probably the beneficiary of the cheating.

This is, however, to say that clearly, the Liberal Party cheated and cheated big to get Robredo to win the vice presidency.

What the electorate is faced today is that we may have many frauds who today sit in elective seats, senators, congressmen, governors, mayors and down the line, but who are not the choice of the electorate due to their having cheated to win.