More than three years ago, ex-senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. filed an election protest with the Supreme Court as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

Marcos and Vice President Leni Robredo were candidates for vice president in the May 2016 elections. Robredo was the administration candidate anointed by the Liberal Party (LP). There were three other contenders.

Robredo was the LP’s second choice for its vice-presidential candidate. The party’s first choice was Sen. Grace Poe, a natural-born Filipino citizen by legal fiction, who turned down the party’s overture. Poe had her erstwhile American eyes on the presidency.

When the supposed “computerized” canvassing of the ballots began, Marcos was winning by over a million votes. Several days later, Robredo ended up ahead of Marcos by about 200,000 votes.

From the start, the Marcos camp noted the suspicious trending in favor of Robredo. As the days went by, the Marcos lead was slowly but systematically being reduced.

Robredo’s very thin lead over Marcos prompted the latter to file his election protest with the PET. Marcos argued that votes cast for him were systematically shaved to favor Robredo.

Anomalous incidents marking the May 2016 elections support the view that the canvassing was rigged to favor Robredo.

First, the technical men of Smartmatic, the company that provided the counting machines, were billeted at the Novotel Hotel at the Araneta Center in Quezon City — the same hotel housing the national campaign headquarters.

Next, several Smartmatic voting machines were seen inside Novotel on election day. Several hours later, the chairman of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) inspected the few hotel rooms personally selected by the hotel management for inspection and, thereafter, announced that there were no voting machines anywhere inside the hotel.

Likewise, the Comelec discovered that a Smartmatic official reconfigured some of the computerized equipment being used in the counting, without prior authorization from the Comelec.

The PET case was raffled off to Justice Alfredo Caguioa, a known Aquino family ally and whose wife was actively involved in Robredo’s vice-presidential campaign. Justice Caguioa, who does not know the meaning of delicadeza, refused to voluntarily inhibit himself from participating in the PET case.

Three years have passed and the election protest remains pending. That should be enough reason for the Marcos camp to complain. The voters are also anxious because they have the right to know the real outcome of the May 2016 vice-presidential elections.

Last week, the PET case made it to the news once again when news reports revealed that Justice Caguioa had finished preparing a draft ruling in favor of Robredo.

The scheduled promulgation of judgment, however, got repeatedly postponed, and this triggered endless speculations from practically everyone. This also prompted the Marcos and Robredo camps to issue their own public statements.

Surprisingly, the Supreme Court, acting as the PET, issued a gag order against Marcos and Robredo. Invoking the so-called sub judice rule, the Court told them to stop discussing the merits of the PET case in public.

That gag order came as a surprise to many because anyone and everyone who has heard about the PET case is already talking about it. What possible harm can discussing the case in public create anyway?

The sub judice rule invoked by the Supreme Court is supposedly designed to protect the justices from getting influenced by commentaries, especially commentaries emanating from the media, in resolving pending cases.

Big deal! If a justice of the Supreme Court is competent, upright and impartial, that justice should not be unduly affected by commentaries made by the parties, the media or the general public.

On the contrary, a justice ought to know everything about a pending case, including such commentaries. That way, all possible angles of the case are considered, and the resulting court judgment can rightfully be described as one judiciously arrived at.

Instead of invoking the sub judice rule, the Supreme Court should abandon that anachronistic, useless restriction and just focus its attention to resolving the PET case.