Comelec affirms election of Nueva Vizcaya governor

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga, Philippines – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has affirmed the victory of Nueva Vizcaya Gov. Ruth Padilla in the 2013 elections after it dismissed a protest filed against her by a defeated candidate.

Padilla’s lawyer Romulo Macalintal said that in an order promulgated Aug. 20, Comelec Commissioners Al Parreño, Arthur Lim and Shariff Abas ruled that the votes claimed by petitioner Jose Gambito during a recount of the ballots from the 76 precincts were not enough to overcome Padilla’s lead of 19,155.

Macalintal received the Comelec decision on Tuesday.

Gambito questioned the votes garnered by Padilla from 379 clustered precincts, citing massive vote-buying and misreading or miscalculation of votes due to faulty precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines and defective or tampered compact flash cards.

Macalintal said to expedite the proceedings, the Comelec ordered Gambito to select 20 percent of the 379 clustered precincts for a recount to determine the merit of the election protest.

He said Gambito chose 76 clustered precincts, which he deemed could support his allegation of fraud and regularities.

The Comelec found that Gambito failed to prove any substantial recovery from these 76 clustered precincts to support his protest.

The possible maximum vote that Gambito could recover from the 76 pilot precincts was only 426 votes.

“Under the best-case scenario Padilla will still beat him by 16,527 votes,” Macalintal said.

He said the Comelec order showed the election was not marred by misreading or miscalculations by the PCOS or vote-buying.