Baybay City war

BAYBAY CITY, Philippines – Mayor Carmen Cari of this city Tuesday morning (June 18) filed at the city prosecutor’s office a complaint for “inciting to sedition” against businessman Vertillano “Al” Relevo, a candidate for vice mayor against her son Michael Cari of the Liberal Party in the recent election.

Relevo was the runningmate of mayoralty candidate Marilou “Malot” Galenzoga of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).

In her complaint, Mayor Cari alleged that “despite respondent’s personal knowledge as to the true result of the elections,” Relevo posted a tarpaulin at his gas station in the city claiming that “the newly-elected mayor of Baybay City was Marilou Galenzoga.”

She said that “the posting of the tarpaulin created chaos and confusion, which endangered public safety and disturbed the peace and order of the community.”

Based on this allegation, the mayor said she filed the complaint against Relevo because the announcement “tend to stir some people, especially the supporters of Galenzoga, to go against duly constituted authorities” and “disrespect the result of the elections.”

The streamers were coupled with posts allegedly on a Facebook account showing a photo-shopped document claiming Galenzoga was proclaimed by the Comelec en banc as “winner in the local election of May 13, 2013” as “City Mayor of the City of Baybay,” she said.

Mayor Cari pointed out that the photo-shopped document was a proclamation of a party-list winner and, if read closely, stated thus, “to entitle its nominee … to serve for a term of three (3) years ending June 30, 2016, in accordance with Section 7, Article VI of the Constitution.” 

The mayor contended that the cited section “refers to Congress,” which meant that it was a manipulated document for a winner who was proclaimed to sit in Congress, not for a local position, the winner of which could not be proclaimed by the national BoC or the Comelec en banc.

Mayor Cari the other day appealed to the opposition camp to “take pity on Baybay City residents and stop duping them about who the real winners of the elections were.” 

She added: “If they really love Baybay, as they claimed in the last elections, they should not be doing this, especially to their own supporters, making them believe in false hope. Let’s move on; after all, there is another election in 2016.”

Documents furnished by the mayor to The Freeman showed that she won her second term in the May 13 elections over Galenzoga by a margin of 15,197 votes, but she complained that, despite this, the opposition camp had “not stopped announcing they are the real winners of the elections and has even filed a complaint for failure of elections at the Comelec.” 

Mayor Cari said that, during the canvassing, Galenzoga had two to three lawyers and some watchers observing the process but they were told by her not to sign the certificates of canvass. “All the results from 109 PCOS machines in the city have been transmitted, although some were done manually because 30 percent of the barangays had no signal,” she said.

She added that if the opposition will continue to employ “underhanded tactics” to sow disunity in her city, she would bring them to court. (FREEMAN)