Ending the Compostela vacuum

As per latest count, the camp of Compostela Mayor-elect Joel Quiño is leading mayoralty candidate Ritchie Wagas by a slim yet decisive 2,300 vote margin in yesterday’s recanvassing of votes by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Manila.

Two precincts are left to be verified. They  reportedly contain 1,400 votes which won’t erase Quiño’s lead over Wagas. The light at the end of the tunnel for Compostela may be found tomorrow, pending yet another last-minute election protest from the Wagas camp.

The Comelec’s recanvassing of votes could have come last year before the Quiño camp’s aborted attempt to take over  Compostela municipal hall.

As it is, the Wagas camp succeeded in delaying the assumption of the mayor-elect and his council and forced  the Department of Interior and Local Governments (DILG) to appoint a caretaker.

We could only hope that Comelec resolves the election dispute with finality tomorrow so as not to  deny Compostela residents the leadership and funding they badly need to move on with their lives.

Reenacted budgets for the past two years only negated whatever progress the town achieved in the past as a fourth class municipality.

Based on the  recount,  Compostela residents wanted a change of leadership and Wagas’ election protest didn’t give them that chance to test and experience the programs that Quiño and his council promised to them.

Wagas’ protest, in fact, showed the vulnerability of the country’s election system to manipulation either through legal tactics or through political influence-peddling by local kingpins—something which Wagas and Quiño, through his patron the Duranos, are all too practiced and familiar with.

The likely event that Wagas will elevate his election protest all the way to the Supreme Court further highlights that weakness and the truism that there are no losers in this country’s elections, only candidates who insist they were cheated.

Wagas’ election protest bears significance for next year’s elections. Incumbent officials with a history of cheating and dirty politics can use the case as reference to delay the possible takeover of their rivals.

If Comelec officials managed to overturn a proclamation and suspend not one but an entire slate of officials, you suspect that something irregular or anomalous is going on.

For now, the Comelec should end the Compostela power vacuum with tomorrow’s recount.

They should also make sure that such protests are  addressed immediately so it won’t deprive local government units of their duly elected leaders.