- GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The Commission on Elections En Banc has affirmed the order of Comelec 2nd Division to dismiss the petition filed by former Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia for a vote recount and nullification of the proclamation of incumbent Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez.
“We emphasize that Protestant neither raised grounds or presented new matters, or issues, that would merit the overruling of the order of the Commission Second Division,”, the Comelec En Banc in a resolution promulgated April 23, said.
Leonardia, who garnered 107,447 votes, sought to nullify the proclamation of Benitez, who won the Bacolod mayoral race with 171,893 votes.
He sought a manual recount of the votes in all 450 clustered precincts in Bacolod City and asked the Comelec to declare failure of elections and conduct special polls due to alleged massive vote-buying and the presence of fake voters.
In dismissing the petition, the Comelec’s Second Division said Leonardia’s protest was “improperly filed and insufficient in form and content”.
In seeking to overturn the decision of Comelec 2nd Division, Leonardia filed a motion for reconsideration (MR) wherein he averred that electoral fraud and irregularities are proper grounds for an election protest, as he wants a revision of ballots and not merely for an investigation of the vote buying activities.
A cursory reading of the allegations in both the Protestant and the MR would reveal that they are too broad, too general and highly speculative, the Comelec en banc noted.
It added that Leonardia is assailing the results in all the clustered precincts that functioned during the elections in Bacolod City, without attaching any single affidavit, or object evidence.
The Comelec en banc further said that the belief or suspicion of the Protestant that the elections were irregularly conducted, but without substantiating the same with a proof, is simply not enough to overcome the presumptive regularity of the automated elections.
It should be stressed that not every invocation of the principle of determining the true will of the electorate should persuade the Commission to disregard the plain requirements of the rules, the Comelec further said.
In a statement, Atty. Caesar Distrito, spokesman of Mayor Benitez, said the decision of the COMELEC is a clear manifestation that the election protest was purely harassment and has no legal and factual basis at all.
Distrito added that the denial of the MR will now put to rest any doubt to the victory of Benitez.
“Mayor Albee won clearly and convincingly with a margin of 64,446 votes. The people had spoken, and so the COMELEC,” he said. | GB
