Thursday, April 05, 2007 Mayoralty bet may face axe By Danilo V. Adorador III
CAGAYAN de Oro mayoral candidate Rhona Canoy is to be disqualified to run in the May 14 elections over her being a non-registered voter in the city, an election official said.
City Commission on Elections (Comelec) Registrar Stalin Baguio said Canoy has no voting record in the city and neither does her name appear in Comelec's central database in Manila.
But Canoy, the daughter of former mayor and popular broadcaster Reuben Canoy, insisted she was a registered voter and that her name may have been among those purged by the Comelec.
Baguio countered that there never was a purge in the city voters' list under his watch -- only deactivation of about 14,000 idle voters.
A voter is deactivated from the list if he or she has not voted in the last two successive elections, he explained.
"There was no purge. There were no flying voters," Baguio told Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro, referring to earlier reports that the City Comelec Office had purged about 20,000 voters in its list.
Canoy, who is running as an independent, was not among those whose names were deactivated, he said.
Baguio said they already informed Canoy of the situation to give her time to withdraw her candidacy.
Canoy's possible exit in the mayoral race leaves four other contenders vying for the hotly-contested seat, namely outgoing Representative Constantino Jaraula, former mayor Pablo Magtajas, former Misamis Oriental governor Antonio Calingin, and Felix Borres, an independent.
Jaraula is running under the administration PaDayon-Lakas-CMD coalition, while Magtajas is PDP Laban-Genuine Opposition's standard-bearer. Calingin is running under Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC).
Calls and text messages to Canoy, whose father is also running for the city's first district congressional seat, were not answered Wednesday afternoon.
