One of the closest and most exciting elections in Cebu took place in 1969 in the old Third Congressional District which comprised the towns of Talisay, Minglanilla, Naga, San Fernando and Carcar.
Tony Cuenco was the incumbent congressman of the Fifth District but in 1969, he relocated to the Third, eyeing the seat then held by Ernesto Bascon rather than defend his turf against the challenge of Ramon Durano’s son-in-law, Tito Calderon.
Bascon ran for reelection but instead of a two-way fight between him and Cuenco as many may have anticipated, things became complicated with the entry of political neophyte Eddie Gullas, a lawyer like Cuenco and Bascon, and executive vice president of the family-owned University of the Visayas.
As the campaign wore on, it became increasingly obvious that it was going to be a tight race between Cuenco and Gullas, with the incumbent, Bascon surprisingly running third.
The results confirmed that. The contest was decided with the barest of margins and had no clear winner until the Supreme Court intervened upon petition of Cuenco.
The initial tally had Cuenco ahead by 51 votes, 17,482 to 17,431. The Gullas camp, however, protested that in one precinct (No. 33) in Carcar, the election return did not “recite” the number of votes obtained by their candidate.
They thus wrote the provincial board of canvassers to return the election return to the board of inspectors for correction by indicating the number of votes (67) for Gullas in Precinct 33. The request was rejected.
The board of inspectors, composed of the chairman, the poll clerk and the inspectors of both Cuenco’s Liberal Party and Gullas’ Nacionalista Party, then petitioned the Court of First Instance (CFI) to allow them to rectify the omission which they ascribed to “honest mistake and inadvertence due to mental fatigue and exhaustion.”
The CFI (now the Regional Trial Court) granted the petition and the the board of inspectors accordingly made the correction in the election return by crediting Gullas with the 67 votes that the board had initially omitted.
As a result, instead of losing by 51 votes Gullas won over Cuenco by 16.
Aggrieved by the decision, Cuenco went to the Supreme Court, attacking the CFI decision that allowed the correction as a grave abuse
of discretion.
The Supreme Court, however, dismissed the petition, declaring that the petitioner (Cuenco) “has not fashioned out a case that perforce would compel this Court’s intervention.”
Thus began the Gullas family’s political dominance of the Third (now the First) District for more than half a century now.