BACOLOD City Mayor-elect Evelio Leonardia told his rival, outgoing Mayor Monico Puentevella, to just accept defeat after the latter announced Monday that he has filed an electoral protest.
“Instead of accepting the facts presented by the election figures, Puentevella insists he sees patterns that lead him to suspect there was fraud,” Leonardia said in a press statement on Tuesday.
“The fact is, he lost by 22,238 votes,” he added.
Leonardia said he hopes that by the time of his inaugural in July, Puentevella “would have recovered and be more circumspect.”
He should be man enough to accept the reality of the election results, the incoming mayor said.
Puentevella and his runningmate Vladimir Gonzalez, who ran under the Pamilya Magbinuligay Kita Para sa Kauswagan (MKK) party, filed their electoral protests with petition for manual recount Friday before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) Central Office.
Their congressional candidate Jude Thaddeus Sayson has until May 27 to file a protest before the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal.
Along with their lawyer, the three Pamilya MKK candidates said they suspect the automated election system was tainted with fraud since more or less 40,000 voters who came to their respective precincts, were not recorded to have cast their votes for either of the three top posts.
Meanwhile, Familiaran said he is unfazed by the electoral protest filed by Gonzalez.
“There is no more human error because the votes were processed and canvassed by the vote counting machine (VCMs),” he said.
A manual re-audit of votes cast in Clustered Precinct 28 of Barangay 10 was conducted Tuesday by the Comelec Central Office, and Familiaran did not send a representative to watch over the process involving 671 votes.
“My office received the notice from Comelec 4:30 p.m. Monday and there is no more time to send a representative because the manual re-audit will start at 8 a.m. the following day (May 24),” he said. (CNC)