Three magistrates have begged off from handling the election protest filed by former Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II against Vice President Jejomar Binay before the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

Court Administrator and SC Spokesman Jose Midas Marquez said Associate Justices Antonio T. Carpio, Diosdado M. Peralta, and Mariano C. Del Castillo inhibited from the case due to their ties with the parties involved.

Marquez said Roxas’ protest was assigned by raffle to Peralta, but the latter turned it down because “he has a relative who works for Binay.”

He said Carpio and Del Castillo followed suit.

“Justice Carpio’s former law firm is handling the case of Sen. Roxas while Justice Del Castillo said sometime ago he worked for the Araneta Group of Companies,” Marquez told a press conference.

Carpio was the founding partner of law firm CVC Law, which represents Roxas clans — a scion of the old rich Araneta and Roxas clans — in his poll protest.

Marquex said the election protest will be raffled off to other SC justices.

Last July 12, Chief Justice Renato Corona declared Roxas' election protest as "sufficient in form and substance" as he required Binay to submit his answer in 10 days.

Corona issued the order in his capacity as ex-officio chairman of PET, which resolves disputea involving the presidential and vice presidential contests.

Marquez said the PET was just waiting for Binay's answer before it convenes.

Binay won over Roxas by more than 700,000 votes in the country's first automatd elections in May.

In his protest, Roxas urged the PEt to conduct a manual revision of votes and order a complete and accurate count of an estimated three million votes that were not canvassed and considered stray or null votes by the Commission on Elections and Congress, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBoC).

The former senator also asked the tribunal to conduct a comprehensive, system-wide forensic analysis of the equipment and paraphernalia used during the first ever computerized election in the country.

Roxas also raised in his protest arguments which had been rejected by the NBoC, leading to the proclamation of Binay as the duly elected vice president of the country last July 9.