Palawan recall plea signatures valid–Alvarez

MANILA, Philippines—The 150,00 signatures gathered for the recall petition against Palawan Governor Abraham Kahlil Mitra were valid, businessman Jose “Pepito” Alvarez claimed Saturday  while denying he was behind the recall.

Alvarez, who ran against but lost to Mitra in the 2010 elections, also denounced as “black propaganda” reports linking him to illegal logging in Cagayan de Oro City, which was devastated recently by Tropical Storm “Sendong.”

Alvarez was answering claims of the Mitra camp that many of the 150,000 signatures gathered in a recall petition were invalid, and that many of them were signatures for the anti-mining campaign in the province.

“There’s no anti-mining there because the forms are clear,” Alvarez said. But he denied he was behind the recall petition.

He said the forms used by the group Kilusang Love Malampaya in filing the recall petition specifically stated who was being recalled and for what reason.

“And we now have this process of verification at the Comelec (Commission on Elections). The Comelec will be the one to decide if these signatures are fake or not,” Alvarez said.

On reports of his logging activities in CDO, he said: “I cut down not a single tree there. Not in my life did I have a (logging) license in Mindanao.”

“There’s no truth that there’s logging in the watershed area (of CDO). No one’s logging there. The ones who are logging are in the ARMM (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao)… in Lanao because they got a permit there. That’s where the logs (that devastated CDO during the flood) came from,” he said in an interview.