Radazas lead in Lapu-Lapu

CEBU, Philippines - It will be likely the Radaza’s will dominate in Lapu-Lapu City as third-termer Mayor Arturo and his wife Paz continue to lead leaving their opponents far behind in the congressional and mayoralty race, respectively.

Based on official and partial results released by the Commission on Elections yesterday, mayoralty candidate Paz Radaza of Lakas-Kampi-CMD is leading the pack with 36,430 votes, way ahead of rivals city Councilor Junard Chan of the Nacionalista Party who has 19,324 and Isabelito Darnayla, running as an independent, with 9,195 votes.

Liberal Party mayoralty candidate Efrain Pelaez has 6,485 votes.

Incumbent Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza, who is serving his third term, is ahead in the congressional race.

Like his wife, the mayor enjoys a very wide margin over his opponents, former undersecretary Joselito Ruiz and Eugene Espedido.

Arturo has garnered 36,363 votes so far. Ruiz has 18,629 while Eugene Espedido has 13,181 votes.

Lapu-Lapu City is likely to have its first lady mayor. There were attempts in the past by some mayors’ wives to get elected but failed.

Paz, 61, is also a barangay captain of Mactan.

“People believed in my sincerity to serve,” Paz said.

Despite the trend in the numbers, Chan and Pelaez have not conceded yet.

Instead, in a press statement, Pelaez, accused the Radaza camp of vote buying.

“We have documented these in photos and videos,” the press statement read.

Mayor Radaza laughed off his rivals’ accusations.

Chan and Pelaez are also accusing the Radazas graft and corruption.

But Mrs. Radaza defended her husband’s administration saying “Di ko motuo ana. Black propaganda ra man gyud na. He is responsible for the people ug dili mi ma-bother ana.”

“Kadali ra pud nilang mangluod. Wala man gud sila maninuod. Ilaha untang gitinuod ang pagpangompanya sa election. Basin pa diay modaog sila,” Mayor Radaza said.

As of 6 o’clock last night, the Comelec still had to canvass the 54 clustered precincts out of the 190.

Comelec officer Ferdinand Gujilde, in an interview with the reporters, said they cannot yet declare the winners.

“Dili pa ta makasulti niana (winners). Ato unang paaboton ang tanan,” Gujilde said.

Gujilde said that they are supposed to issue partial results but the automated machines suffered some glitches. It took almost seven hours before the consolidated  automated and canvassing of votes started because two of the three USB’s did not work, which the City Board of Canvassers’ server receives transmission of votes from Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) in different clustered precinct.

Since there were no available technician from Smartmatic to fix the technical problem, Comelec had to tap their own technical people but after several hours, Gujilde declared the consolidation and canvassing of votes suspended at 1 p.m.

The canvassing resumed at past 2 p.m. after Smartmatic office in Manila told them through phone to download the memory cards to another PCOS machine. – THE FREEMAN