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Thursday, February 05, 2004
Poll officer denies naming Talisay a hotspot
By Ramon Jaluag
TALISAY City Election Officer III Corazon Moran herself was more surprised over the city’s alleged inclusion in the list of election hotspots in the province.
This was Moran’s reaction to Vice Mayor and mayoralty aspirant Lani Abarquez’s accusation that she (Moran) could have recommended the city’s inclusion in the hotspots list.
Abarquez asked Moran, in a letter sent last Monday, to clarify a news report claiming that Talisay City is considered a hotspot.
Abarquez said the news item came as a surprise as she and the other four contenders, including three female candidates and the president emeritus of the Catholic Faith Defenders and former mayor Socrates Fernandez, have no history of election violence.
If Abarquez and Moran were surprised over the hotspot tag, Mayor Eduardo Gullas was flabbergasted.
“If at all Talisay City has been considered a hotspot or an area of immediate concern, then I take it as a slur on the city,” Gullas told reporters yesterday.
The mayor said that if the report was true, he would have registered his protest over the undeserved tag.
Moran, in an interview, denied she was the source of published reports naming Talisay City as among the places in the province considered as hotspots in the May 10 elections.
She said she never issued any statement to any media person regarding this.
Moran also denied making any report to the Provincial Comelec office recommending that Talisay City be included in the hotspot list.
“I was even surprised when I read about it in your letter. Rest assured that there is definitely no ground for anybody to recommend that Talisay City is even a potential hotspot in the coming elections,” Moran said in her letter-reply to Abarquez.
For a town or city to be considered a hotspot, Gullas said the election contest in the place should be hotly contested.
But Gullas said the election in the city is never going to be hotly contested.
Asked why he was sure that it is not going to be a hot contest between his candidate, Fernandez and the four other aspirants, including Abarquez, Gullas said it is his gut-feel.
Gullas is running for congressman but he is managing Alayon party’s campaign in the city.
Another hotspot criteria include the commission of election-related violence in the place during the past two elections.
But there had been no single violent election-related incident in Talisay City in the past two years.
(February 5, 2004 issue)
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