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Thursday, June 03, 2004
City sends 4 reps to Congress tally
THE Cebu City Government sent four of its employees to the canvassing in Congress, even as the opposition asked the Supreme Court to stop the proceedings yesterday.
The City Hall workers were ordered to assist Cebu City Reps. Raul del Mar and Antonio Cuenco in defending the city against allegations of fraud.
The four were among the City Hall personnel who helped the local Commission on Elections (Comelec) during the canvassing here.
But while the Mandaue City Council raised the idea of declaring Rep. Didagen Dilangalen persona non grata in Cebu, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña said he would rather not give any importance to “the gentleman from Maguindanao.”
Pay him no attention, “so he will ultimately shut up,” the mayor urged.
“Why should we react to this guy? The more we react, the more he’ll speak out,” he said.
Although Congress has yet to start canvassing after almost two weeks, allies of President Arroyo in Cebu are preparing to answer the opposition’s claim that poll results here were manipulated in Arroyo’s favor.
SC petition
As this developed, House Speaker Jose de Venecia and Senate President Franklin Drilon remained confident the High Tribunal will not intervene, much less stop, the canvassing.
An opposition legislator asked the Supreme Court yesterday to stop the delayed vote count for the May 10 presidential election, on grounds that the process was unconstitutional.
Rep. Ruy Elias Lopez asked the Supreme Court to compel the House and the Senate to conduct the canvass of provincial-level vote counts as a whole, and not delegate the process to a joint committee.
“There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution that allows expressly or by inference such removal and transfer of canvassing from Congress as a whole body to another entity,” Lopez argued in his petition.
There was no immediate reaction from the Supreme Court.
Congress proceeded yesterday with the laborious process of opening ballot boxes containing the official vote tallies for each province and precinct.
These were then turned over to the joint committee tasked with adding up the votes for the five presidential candidates and four aspirants for vice president.
Exit polls and unofficial tallies show President Arroyo has won the election against her main rival, Fernando Poe Jr. However, under the Constitution only Congress can proclaim the winner.
“We must not test the impatience of the people to know the truth,” presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said in a statement.
Assistance
Cebu City Election Officer Simaco Labata, for his part, is still waiting for their head office to summon him in relation to the ongoing canvassing.
He said Cebu City’s certificates of canvass have yet to be opened so there is no need yet for him to be in Congress.
Labata added that the four employees sent by City Hall had helped Congressmen Cuenco and del Mar with the statement of votes, since the canvassing in Cebu City involved 24 sub-committees that separately checked the election returns.
The four employees, led by Cathy Yso of the mayor’s office, are in Manila to lend technical support and “prepare everything” so that documentation is complete, Osmeña told a press conference yesterday.
Osmeña said that engineer Paul Villarete was among those sent but the City Hall planning officer clarified that he had a two-day meeting in Manila and simply dropped by the national canvassing when he had the chance.
Osmeña added that the four are not representing his party but Cebu City, which Dilangalen said was among the sites of massive cheating for President Arroyo.
But the mayor stressed that Cebu City residents are the “most politically mature in the Philippines.”
“When people like you, they will vote for you even if you don’t spend money,” he said. RHM/AFP
(June 3, 2004 issue)
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