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Monday, June 21, 2004
Sonny wants recount of votes in Cebu City
By Linette C. Ramos
With Charmaine Y. Rodriguez
CEBU CITY -- Sen. John "Sonny" Osmeña called for the canvassing of votes from Cebu City Sunday morning, but he also vowed to ask the Senate for a recount of all votes for president in Cebu to prove his allegations of fraud.
Osmeña said that Cebu City election officers and the city’s representatives in Congress failed to convince him that the votes cast for President Arroyo were genuine, but he still moved to canvass the certificates of canvass (COCs) "so we do not disenfranchise the voters of Cebu City."
He doubted the figures presented by City Election Officers Simaco Labata and Marchel Sarno, who disputed his allegations that votes for Arroyo exceeded the total number of votes cast in the city’s south district.
While the session was suspended, Cuenco and the election officers showed that there were 464,809 registered voters in the city, only 331,152 of whom voted in the May 10 polls.
The number of votes cast for all presidential candidates was only 327,672. Of that number, 220,060 went to Arroyo.
In the south district, the voter turnout was 174,926 and the votes cast for all presidential candidates was 174,737. A total of 117,435 votes in the south went to Arroyo.
"I am not satisfied with their explanations because I know there was cheating in Cebu by some political leaders, that is why I will ask the Senate for a recount of all the votes in Cebu City. I don’t care if they do it in the middle of Plaza Independencia all day or anywhere, I just want a recount," Osmeña told Sun.Star.
The Cebuano senator made a manifestation to canvass the votes from Cebu City shortly after the joint session resumed past 10 a.m. Sunday.
"I did not withdraw my objections to the COCs (of Cebu) because I am still convinced there was cheating in Cebu, like what happened in Barangay Quiot and Poblacion in Pardo. I am glad that finally, the canvassing committee recognized that there was cheating in Cebu, otherwise they wouldn’t have supported the suspension of the canvassing," he added.
Last Saturday, Osmeña moved to defer the canvassing of votes from Cebu City, which his cousin Sen. Sergio "Serge" Osmeña III and the Senate panel supported. That delayed the canvassing of Cebu City’s votes to yesterday, the last day of the preliminary tally.
Osmeña said he will include the ballots from some municipalities in Cebu Province in the recount that he will request before the Senate Electoral Tribunal, which he hopes to file this week.
At the canvassing Sunday, Rep. Antonio Cuenco (Cebu City, south) presented to the committee Sarno and Labata’s two-page certification, where they explained the alleged discrepancy between the number of actual votes cast and the number of votes received by presidential candidates in the south district.
He also presented the COCs, the statement of votes (SOVs) and election returns from his district.
"We do not cheat in Cebu. We know how to count and we also know how to punish via the ballot those who falsely accuse us of dishonesty. Their day will come," Cuenco said.
In a phone interview, Labata explained that the number of votes the presidential candidates received exceeded the number of actual votes cast because some SOVs had incomplete statistical data.
"There were SOVS that lacked some data because in the election returns, the actual number of votes cast in a particular precinct was not indicated so when they added all the number of votes cast sa SOVs, gamay ra gyud. We already corrected that and I assure there was no vote-padding or vote-shaving in the votes for president," he said.
Osmeña believes the figures were inaccurate and the explanation and corrections were just "lame excuses" made by Cebu’s political leaders, whom he accused of altering the number of votes cast for presidential candidates.
"We recognize that the errors that were found in the COCs were not the doing of the good people of Cebu who undeniably voted overwhelmingly for President Arroyo. It is not their fault that their leaders are cheats, and it is not their fault therefore that things happened as they did," he said, before moving to have the votes of Cebu City canvassed.
Cuenco and Rep. Raul del Mar (Cebu City, north) said they believed that the two Osmeña senators were already contented with their explanation since they no longer objected to the canvassing of the Cebu City votes yesterday.
Del Mar said that aside from the COCs, SOVs and other documents that they gave the senators, they are also willing to show the committee copies of the election returns.
Both congressmen also found unnecessary the objections that Osmeña raised, particularly the alleged discrepancy in the votes cast and the voter turnout in the south district.
"Their figures were clearly unofficial and we have been saying those have been corrected already. Wala man molapas sa langit ang votes ni Gloria. Now it looks like they are satisfied, especially Serge, but katong usa (Sonny), dili gyud musabot (Sonny refuses to understand)," Cuenco said.
Osmeña questioned how Cuenco and the election officers got the figures and how they arrived at their explanation Sunday when, last Saturday, they had no figures or documents to present to the body.
He also wondered how Cuenco could have gotten the figures and the documents overnight when Comelec offices in Cebu and Manila are closed on weekends.
Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal refused to comment on the questions raised by the two Osmeña senators.
"If that’s they saw, what can we do?" the prelate told Sun.Star in an interview after his 7 a.m. mass at the Redemptorist Parish Sunday.
Vidal also refused to comment when asked if the move of the Osmeña cousins would earn them the ire of Cebuanos.
"That I do not know. I hope they (the Cebuanos) would not be angry with me," he added, laughing.
Cardinal Vidal earlier confirmed that there were "subtle" forms of cheating in Cebu but stressed that there was no massive fraud in favor of President Arroyo.
However, presidential candidate Eddie Villanueva said he is convinced that the prelate doubts the results of the elections here.
"Definitely, it appears (he doubts the results)," he told radio dyLA.
Villanueva met with Vidal at the Archbishop’s Palace Saturday morning but the prelate did not accept a video compact disc, which contained proof of poll fraud in Cebu.
Vidal, he said, already knows what happened.
The prelate, for his part, said the evidence presented should speak for itself.
He noted that Villanueva assured him that there will be no violence from his camp.
The Archiodecese of Cebu, in its official publication "Bag-ong Lungsoranon" said: "Wala kita’y ilusyon nga wala’y tikas ni kahiwian nga nahitabo sa eleksyon. Ug dili maayong ipadaplin kining mga kahiwian aron lang malikayan ang dugang pang kagubot." (We are not under the illusion that absolutely no cheating was committed in the election. And it is not good to set these anomalies aside just to avoid trouble.)
However, the archdiocese also urged those who are raising allegations of fraud to bring these to the proper forum and not in the joint session. LCR/CYR
(June 21, 2004 issue)
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Arroyo beats FPJ by 1.1M in final tally