Comelec urged to act on Surigao bet’s plea

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) was assailed yesterday for allegedly delaying the resolution of the disqualification case filed against Robert Lyndon Barbers, son of Sen. Robert Barbers, who was proclaimed winner in Surigao del Norte’s gubernatorial race.

Ernesto Matugas, the young Barbers’ closest rival in the polls, decried the failure of the Comelec en banc to act on his urgent petition to annul the proclamation of Barbers who, he claimed, is an American citizen.

Matugas, who ran under the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP), said the Comelec has yet to conduct a hearing on his petition since he filed the disqualification case last April at the height of the election campaign.

"I do not know what is preventing the Comelec en banc from hearing and resolving the case against Lyndon (Barbers) despite the strong evidence we have submitted to prove that he is a US citizen who is thus disqualified from running for elective office," Matugas said.

Matugas insisted that the young Barbers was ineligible to run in the elections, saying that both the US Embassy and the Bureau of Immigration have certified that he is an American citizen.

He cited the latest certification which the bureau issued last June 6 which reportedly showed that Barbers used a US passport when he arrived in the Philippines on four occasions from 1995 to 1998, and thrice when he left the country between 1993 and 1996.