Monday, September 08, 2008 Corro owes teachers in polls an apology, Loot camp says
DAANBANTAYAN Mayor Sun Shimura and Vice Mayor Ma. Luisa Loot denied coercing the town’s public school teachers to defend them against allegations of election fraud.
They said that Engr. Augusto “Itok” Corro, the court-declared winner of the 2007 elections, is insulting and maligning the “integrity, dignity and intelligence of the educators” in Daanbantayan for alleging that the teachers were forced to execute affidavits in their favor.
Corro, in a statement last Saturday, said the Loots “coerced” the teachers to sign affidavits to contest the poll irregularities found by Regional Trial Court Judge Antonio Marigomen, who declared Corro and his runningmate Dr. Jose de Leon the winners in last year’s elections.
Corro called the alleged coercion an “expensive act of desperation.”
“For the record, we never ‘coerced’ the teachers to execute affidavits to defend us. They were properly informed of their rights and were told to exercise freedom and prudence in addressing the issue,” Shimura and his mother, Loot, said in a statement faxed to Sun.Star Cebu yesterday.
They also said that contrary to Corro’s claim that their move is futile, the affidavits, executed by more than 500 teachers who served as members of the Board of Election Inspectors, “will be useful in the Commission on Elections (Comelec).”
Shimura and Loot have until Sept. 21 to secure a temporary restraining order from the Comelec to prohibit Corro and de Leon from assuming their posts. Marigomen already issued last Sept. 1 an order allowing Corro and de Leon to “immediately” take over as the town’s mayor and vice mayor.
The mother-and-son tandem yesterday urged Corro to meet the teachers and ask them about their sentiments.
Proof
They said Corro could even ask the teachers to executive affidavits to “attest to the truth of what really transpired at the precinct level during the 2007 elections.”
“On the other hand, Itok Corro should be glad that the teachers have come out in the open for their testimonies may even bolster his claim that he was cheated at the precinct level during the 2007 elections. So why denounce the act of the teachers if he thinks he is aggrieved and disadvantaged by his perceived anomalies?” Shimura and Loot’s statement also read.
They also denied Corro’s claim that they only presented one teacher in court.
“When it was our turn to present our evidence and witnesses, we asked the court, and this is on record, to present even a hundred or more teachers as witnesses but we were denied. Itok Corro is either trying to mislead the public or is ignorant of the issue,” they added.
The lone teacher that Corro referred to was not a witness but a subject of a complaint that was dismissed, they said. (CYR)
