Friday, May 09, 2008 Pardo barangay chief loses by 134 votes in recount
INCUMBENT Pardo Barangay Captain Danilo Lim lost in the last elections, according to a recount of 47 precincts by the Municipal Trial Court in Cities (MTCC).
MTCC Judge Monalila Tecson, in a 21-page ruling promulgated yesterday, said it was Lim’s opponent, Fermin Badayos Dasmariñas, who won with a margin of 134 votes.
Tecson then proclaimed Dasmariñas the “winner and duly elected (barangay captain) of Poblacion Pardo.” She directed Lim to pay P25,000 in litigation expenses and fees.
Lim, in an interview over radio dyLA, said he’ll abide by the ruling but will file an appeal before the Regional Trial Court (RTC).
He said there was no cheating during the last elections. He also said no member of the Board of Election Tellers (BET) was presented during the hearings.
He is consulting with his lawyers on what to do after the ruling.
Lim told Sun.Star Cebu he was not surprised by the ruling, alleging that the proceedings were hastily done. He also alleged that the court did not hear the side of teachers who were willing to authenticate and verify the ballots and election returns.
Prior to the recount, Lim failed to file his preliminary conference brief. Dasmariñas then moved to declare Lim in default for not passing an answer to his counter-protest.
Due process
“(Lim) has no reason to complain that he’s not been afforded due process because the court, despite having lost his personality as a result of non-filing of the preliminary conference brief, still graciously accommodated and allowed him to participate and be represented in the revision proceedings,” the ruling read.
Tecson said the recount showed that 2,979 votes were cast in favor of Dasmariñas during the synchronized Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) and barangay elections last Oct. 29. Lim, on the other hand, got only 2,845 votes.
Lim was proclaimed the winning candidate last Oct. 30, a day after the elections was held.
He was credited with 2,910 votes while Dasmariñas, his closest contender, got 2,858 - a margin of 52 votes.
But Dasmariñas immediately filed a protest, saying that “various election anomalies, irregularities and fraud” and “rampant violation of election laws, rules and regulations” were committed during the poll.
He said this resulted in “discrepancies in the election results.”
He alleged that there were ballots that appeared to have been prepared by only one person, basing on the penmanship.
He also said that there were individual ballots that were filled up by at least two people, again basing on the penmanship.
There were also allegedly incidents of vote-buying and “dagdag-bawas.”
Lim, for his part, maintained that the election was “clean, honest, orderly and free.”
“The allegations of anomalies, irregularities, fraud, discrepancies of election returns, is a shotgun accusation without specifics as to what violations were being committed in each and every precinct,” he said.
“Nowhere in the records of the (Commission on Elections), nor in the precincts, that such litanies of violations were committed,” he added.
Decisive lead
He said the results gave him a decisive lead and not merely a presumptive one.
Tecson, in hearing the protest, ordered the production of the ballot boxes, election returns and official election documents culled from all 47 precincts in Pardo for comparison.
She then formed a revision committee and immediately directed the members to start the revision of the ballots.
The per-precinct variance between the original count and the recount were not high. A recount in one precinct showed Dasma-riñas earning 72 votes. During the original counting, he was only awarded 68.
In another precinct, the recount showed Dasma-riñas having a total of 142 votes cast. However, during the original count, he was credited with only 139. (Rachel O. Capapas, Silliman University Masscomm Intern/With a report from NRC)
