MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has ordered a manual recount of votes contested by former Speaker Prospero Nograles, who lost the mayoral race in May last year to then Vice Mayor Zara Duterte.
The order followed a similar decision for the appreciation of disputed ballots in Manila, where losing mayoral candidate Lito Atienza is questioning the victory of Mayor Alfredo Lim.
For the recount in Davao City, the Comelec created 10 teams to do the process of reading the ballots and tabulating the votes manually starting on April 11 at its electoral contests adjudication department in Manila. Lawyer Magella Ferrer was named overall supervisor of the recount teams.
Comelec Commissioner Lucenito Tagle, who presides over the poll body’s Second Division, said that instead of opening over 20 percent or 235 ballot boxes which is their policy for a recount, Nograles had filed a motion to just open 100 ballot boxes from clustered precincts.
“If in these boxes, it will be proven that he really lost, he will abandon (the electoral protest),” Tagle said.
In his electoral protest, Nograles cited alleged violations of the electoral procedure that constituted fraud and irregularity, including the absence of his poll watchers during the removal of compact flash cards from the automated machines days before the May 10 elections last year.
If the ballots were manually counted, Nograles said he was confident that the actual number of votes cast would not tally with the results transmitted by the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines to Comelec tabulation centers in Davao City and Manila.
He thanked Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes for the poll body’s decision to act on his protest despite the fact that Brillantes is the former lawyer of Duterte in the electoral case he filed against his opponent.
The Comelec ordered both parties to have their lawyers and watchers diligently attend the recount proceedings and to come on time so the process won’t be delayed.
It directed Ferrer to submit daily progress reports on the recount, which will be done starting at 8:30 a.m. every day from Monday through Friday until all the pre-selected ballot boxes have been recounted.
Ballots that have been re-appreciated, together with the boxes, and related paraphernalia would have to be safeguarded for future use.
Duterte succeeded her father, former mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who ran and won as her vice mayor. The Dutertes have been in power in Davao City for several years. – With Sheila Crisostomo