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Sunday, May 23, 2004
Villanueva appeals Guagua poll canvass
By Ria Isidro-de Fiesta
GUAGUA -- Presidential candidate Eddie Villanueva has filed a complaint before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) alleging irregularity in the canvassing of votes in this town.
Villanueva, through lawyers Marie Paz Duque and Vivian Dabu, filed the appeal-complaint, saying there was discrepancy because the number of votes cast was more than the actual number of registered voters.
Duque and Dabu said the results were "tampered."
They said the discrepancies were discovered while they were monitoring the canvassing on May 12.
Earlier, Senator Aquilino Pimentel alleged the Bacolor municipal board of canvassers of vote padding and shaving when one of their members omitted the "0" from the 6,030 votes he garnered in the town.
Pimentel and Villanueva are gathering evidence to attest their allegations.
Dabu also noted that the alleged Guagua discrepancy was not corrected at the provincial level.
Comelec on the other hand may proclaim the 12 winning senatorial candidates on Monday, Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr., said Saturday.
The National Board of Canvassers at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) will do the proclamation after canvassing the last six Certificates of Canvass (COC) totaling over a million votes on Sunday.
Candidates in the top 12 slots of the Comelec senatorial race tally as of 4:12 p.m. of May 21 are Mar Roxas - 11,666,370; Ramon Revilla Jr.- 9,744,838; Aquilino Pimentel Jr. - 7,846,470; Jamby Madrigal - 7,706,730; Richard Gordon - 7,455,276; Miriam Defensor-Santiago - 7,430,223; Pia Cayetano - 7,383,608; Manuel Lapid - 6,897,104; Robert Barbers - 6,391,040; Juan Enrile - 6,376,511;
Alfredo Lim - 6,323,327; Jinggoy Estrada - 6,285,509.
Comelec meanwhile, dismissed opposition charges of widespread cheating, saying the recent bitterly-contested elections were generally clean.
Comelec commissioner Florentino Tuazon denied opposition charges of widespread cheating in the May 10 presidential and general elections, saying he did not see any sign of systematic fraud.
"If there were reports of cheating, they were isolated cases and that's natural," he said.
In another forum, the independent monitor the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) said the results of the election were "credible and reflect the voice of the people," despite some confusion over names being left off the official voters lists.
The results of the May 10 poll are not expected for days due to the slow manual counting of the votes from across the archipelago.
However, an exit poll and preliminary "quick-counts" have found that incumbent President Arroyo is the likely winner of a new six-year term, beating her chief rival, movie star Fernando Poe.
The latest tally of the votes by Namfrel's government-sanctioned count found Arroyo still leading with 7.952 million votes against Poe's 7.214 million votes. This accounts for 62.8 percent of all election precincts.
Poe has refused to accept this, saying that he is the real winner and that the Arroyo camp is cheating him out of a victory.
The government has previously warned Poe that he may be unwittingly playing into the hands of groups who want to discredit the elections.
Tuazon said Comelec had asked the opposition to show proof of cheating but said "there is no evidence being presented, just allegations."
Namfrel said in a statement that while there were cases of fraud and discrepancies, they were mostly is polls held for lower positions.
"We did not see enough electoral anomalies on the national level to have material effect on the national results," Namfrel said.(with reports from Marie Neri)
(May 23, 2004 issue)
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