BAYOMBONG, NUEVA VIZCAYA: Gov. Imee Marcos said her brother and former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. may soon assume office as Vice President.

“We’ll just have to be patient,” she added.

Marcos was in Nueva Vizcaya on Saturday as guest speaker during the 2nd anniversary celebration of the Timpuyog ti Babbalasang idi Kalman-Nueva Vizcaya, an organization of married women.





She met and conferred with former Kabataang Barangay (KB) leaders in the province led by former board member Efren Quiben.

The KB, predecessor of the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK), was created by Presidential Decree 684 signed on April 15, 1975, by the governor’s father and then-President Ferdinand Marcos but was abolished in 1986 after he was overthrown from office.

Marcos said her brother is very serious in his election protest against Vice President Maria Leonor Robredo.

“Although it is a bit slow, Bongbong has narrowed the lead [of Robredo] down to about 200,000 votes in the ongoing recount,” she said.

Robredo won the vice presidency with a lead of 263,473 votes over the former senator.

In the official tally, Robredo obtained 14,418,817 votes while Marcos had 14,155,344.

The Ilocos Norte governor said at this point they are invalidating the votes in only three provinces, Camarines Sur, Iloilo and Negros Oriental.

“We are in the second province already. We are hopeful that we will be able to prove that all those wet ballots and all those ballots in excess of the number of voters should be invalidated,” according to Marcos.

The one voted by Nueva Vizcaya and Ilocos Norte will soon be taking over as Vice President, she said, referring to his brother.

According to her, they are very optimistic because they were quite shocked by what had transpired and what they have seen.

“We thought there would be some complicated, sophisticated algorithmic fraud. In fact it is very old school, I mean clearly the ballots were tampered with, they are all wet and unreadable. Some were burned with cigarettes and some were just dumped in large plastic sacks and no longer the ballot boxes,” Marcos said.

Marcos’ camp at the start of the recount early in April claimed to have discovered irregularities in a number of ballot boxes, such as wet and distorted ballots and also discovered that some of the ballot boxes did not have an “audit log” or the logbook indicating the time of opening of precincts, the time of transmittal of results and the times the voting started and ended.

Marcos, son and namesake of late former President Ferdinand Marcos, is contesting election results in some 39,000 clustered precincts from 30 provinces and cities all over the country.

He accuses Robredo of benefiting from “massive electoral fraud, anomalies and irregularities” such as pre-shading of ballots, pre-loading secure digital cards, misreading of ballots, malfunctioning vote-counting machines and an “abnormally high” unaccounted votes or undervotes.

“I am certain that in its wisdom, the Supreme Court will invalidate such votes,” the governor said.

She added that she wishes there is a timetable because it has taken two years already and nothing has happened yet.

“We are a bit bored but my brother always reminds us that we should be patient,” Marcos said, adding she is the one who is sometimes frustrated.

Meanwhile, Marcos said she might be running for senator with Pia Cayetano and Cynthia Villar under the Nacionalista Party but said she is not sure what will happen in the end and that it will all depend on developments in her brother’s protest.