Governors defend ‘initiative’ signatures

The governors of La Union and Bataan defended yesterday the integrity of the signatures gathered by the proponents of the people’s initiative to amend the Constitution.

The local officials assured the people that the signature-gathering was carried out without any attempt to influence the voters.

La Union Gov. Fred Ortega and Bataan Gov. Enrique "Tet" Garcia told a press briefing in a restaurant in Quezon City that local election officers have religiously verified the signatures gathered in their areas.

Ortega said the voters signed the petition for people’s initiative as a show of support for their local political leaders in La Union where 42 percent of registered voters in two congressional districts signed the petition.

"We have not spent a single centavo to get the signatures," Ortega said.

Garcia said the integrity of the signatures should have been questioned during the process of verification and not after, which opponents of Charter change are now doing.

The two governors issued their statement after officials of Sigaw ng Bayan, the group that spearheaded the people’s initiative, said that lawyers for elite groups opposing Charter change have failed to substantiate their charges over the alleged discrepancies and other irregularities in the gathering of 6.3 million signatures.

Raul Lambino, Sigaw ng Bayan spokesman, said that during the opening of the boxes containing the signatures submitted to the Supreme Court, lawyers of One Voice and other anti-Charter change groups failed to prove there allegations.

He said the claim in the media that the anti-Charter change groups have uncovered spurious or fabricated signatures is misleading because the same signatures were the ones excluded earlier and discarded by local election officers during the verification process.

Lambino said during the six-month verification process One Voice and other groups did not bother to check with local Comelec offices to monitor the verification process.

"Except in Makati and San Juan where there were representatives of groups opposing Charter Change, in other parts of the country not a single opposition (representative) surfaced," Lambino said.