The Commission on Elections of Cebu Province (Comelec-Cebu) will hold the recanvassing of votes of the 2010 elections in Compostela on July 27 in the town.
Cebu Provincial Comelec supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano said yesterday that they would do the recanvassing at the town if there would be no order from the Comelec en banc to transfer the place of the recanvassing.
Castillano said this would be done manually and not through the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.
He said Comelec would shoulder the cost and expenses of the recanvassing.
Pedro Noval, the appointed caretaker mayor of Compostela town, said he requested for tighter security since Comelec En Banc dismisssed mayor-elect Joel Quiño and the town councilors motion for reconsideration of the Comelec second division’s decision on the election protest of former Compostela mayor Ritchie Wagas.
The petition sought to annul the proclamation of Quiño as mayor, the town’s vice mayor and councilors.
Noval, the Department of Interior and Local Government in Central Visayas director, placed Compostela town under red alert and assigned policemen to guard entrances of the town hall to avoid a repeat of last month’s short-lived takeover by Quiño and his followers.
Noval said both camps would be allowed to witness the recanvassing process subject to Comelec guidelines.
Security will be provided to ensure no untoward incident between followers.
Quiño, for his part, said he would ask the Comelec to provide him with the guidelines of the recanvassing of the May 2010 election votes.
Quiño said the recanvassing would just reveal the truth that they had the most number of votes and that there was no irregularity in the elections.
He said he would continue to question the decision that stopped them from taking over their position.
He said that they should be serving their positions while the election protest filed by Wagas was being resolved.
He cited the election protest filed by Mar Roxas against Vice President Jejomar Binay.
He said Binay was serving his term as the vice president despite the protest.
He said the same rule should also apply to them.
He said his lawyers were drafting the motion for reconsideration they would file at the Supreme Court.
He said they would ask the High Court to let them serve the remaining portion of their three-year term until the election protest would be resolved.
He also criticized the Comelec saying if they favored the recanvassing of votes then they should have prepared guidelines for it.
He said that he didn’t even know yet the date for the recanvassing and how these should be done.
He said that Comelec should be fast in making the guidelines because it is the people in Compostela that suffers the most from it./With a report from Correspondent Carine
M. Asutilla