Bacolod Rep. and Mayor-Elect Evelio Leonardia asked the Commission on Elections to dismiss the election protest filed by outgoing Mayor Monico Puentevella against him for lack of merit and to grant his counter-claim after proving the same at the hearing of the case. Puentevella and his running mate, vice mayoralty candidate Vladimir Gonzalez filed an election protest against Bacolod Rep. and Mayor-elect Evelio Leonardia and Vice Mayor-elect El Cid Familiaran, respectively, before the Electoral Contest Adjudication Department of the Commission on Elections, seeking a manual recount or audit of the ballots cast during the May 9 elections. Puentevella got 97,993 votes against Leonardia who got 120,231 votes, while Gonzalez got 86,611 votes against El Cid Familiaran who got 108,360 votes. In his answer dated June 21, Leonardia, who is represented by Joselito Bayatan and Edward Joseph Causing, said there is no violation of Batas Pambansa 881 Section 206 with regard to the appreciation, tabulation and computation of ballots per clustered precincts as claimed by Puentevella. Leonardia said Puentevella cannot distinguish between the old election law and procedure under B.P. 881 and the updated and modern methodology of election under R.A. 9369. In his petition, Puentevella said that the Board of Election Inspectors should have counted the ballots in a public manner in ascertaining the votes in the concerned precinct. SYSTEM BLAMED He further blamed the electronic system by stating that the use of the Vote Counting Machine avoided the publicly-visible counting, tabulation or computation of the total votes cast because, according to him, only the VCM did the computation without any human witness, thus violates Sec. 206 of BP 881. NO PROOF SHOWN Leonardia said Puentevella cannot show proof even in his initiatory pleadings that there were alleged anomalies, irregularities, or fraud in their specific manner of commission, except by his own unsubstantiated outcry, opinionated generalization, and his obnoxious condemnation of the existing Automated Electronic System is only to satisfy his obsession in questioning his massive defeat in the mayoralty election. He said Puentevella should have raised the issue at the earliest opportunity during the canvass, either by filing his petition under oath before the Board of Canvassers, or even directly to the Comelec as provided in Resolution 10083, Section 9. The claims of Puentevella that the candidates were deprived through their watchers to check on their election returns because the proclamation of the winners was simply based on the consolidated data from the storage data devices, is another expression of his ignorance of the nature and characteristic of the Automated Election System, he added. Leonardia said the alleged “manifest error” claimed by Puentevella would have come from the voter's themselves, inasmuch as they were given the opportunity to examine for themselves the correctness of their votes from their voters' receipt print-out, pursuant to Comelec Resolution 10117. ESTIMATED SUPPORTERS Puentevella argued that since his estimated 120,000 supporters failed to deliver their votes for him then the constitutional guarantee on suffrage was violated, or it worked against him. For Puentevella to claim that he had 120,000 supporters to vote for him and none should go astray, is an argument that distorts the meaning of suffrage. Supporters can be far different from voters insofar as suffrage is concerned, Leonardia said. Especially in the given situation that Puentevella garnered 97,993 votes out of his expected 120,000 votes, then these 97,993 votes, in the meaning of suffrage, are those who exercised their sovereign free will in favor of Puentevella, while the rest of the 120,000 “supporters” could have abstained or could have shifted their votes to other candidates, he said. Leonardia said Comelec Resolution 10057 and 10083 were issued by the Commission to safeguard the rights of the candidates and the voters in the conduct of the election at the level of the BEI and BOC. This is not to mention that the proficiency and efficiency of the Vote Counting Machine has been tested and validated under Comelec Resolution 10090 and 1000109 by way of Random Manual Audit, he said. FORUM SHOPPING Leonardia said Puentevella is guilty of forum shopping because there is a similar pending case of “recount” filed before the Branch 42 of the Regional Trail Court filed by Richard Calulut et al also seeking a manual recount or audit of the ballots cast in the May 9 elections. This warrants the dismissal of his petition, he said.*CGS Visayan Daily Star BY CHRYSEE SAMILLANO
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