BACOLOD City – Vice mayor-elect El Cid Familiaran was not bothered by the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) decision to grant a manual recount of votes cast in five precincts here. Familiaran did not even bother to send a representative to the recount that started Tuesday morning at Comelec central office in Intramuros, Manila. The recount came about after defeated candidates Mayor Monico Puentevella (for mayor) and Vladimir Gonzales (for vice mayor) filed electoral protests last week against mayor-elect Evelio Leonardia and Familiaran Familiaran said he had no time to send a representative in Manila and witness the manual audit because his office received Comelec’s notice only on Monday afternoon. The outgoing councilor said he is confident that the election results were accurate. He also noted that the ballots from the three precincts here have been subject to a random manual audit. If there would be any discrepancy found during the audit, Familiaran said he believes they would only include minor glitches, such as incorrect shading in the ballots that vote counting machines failed to read. Leonardia sent his counsel, Edward Joseph Cuansing, to witness the audit, while Puentevella said his lawyers from the Calleja Law Firm represented him and Gonzales. Allen Francis Abaya, acting director for Comelec’s Electoral Contests Adjudication Department, issued two notices on Monday granting a manual audit of ballots in precincts 0092A, 0093A, 00093B, 0094A, and 0099A as petitioned by Puentevella and Gonzales. Puentevella, who led the Magbinuligay Kita sa Kauswagan (MKK) political group, claimed that about 40,000 voters here did not actually cast their votes for the city’s three top elective posts. MKK’s defeated congressional candidate Jude Thaddeus Sayson, meanwhile, is set to file his protest before the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal on or before June 15. The MKK group believed that the May 9 elections here were fraudulent. The party also noted an “unusual” pattern of voters’ turnout in three barangays here./PN By MAE SINGUAY
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