Recount of 3rd district Congress votes to start soon

THE recounting of votes in the race for the seat of Cebu’s third congressional district is expected to start soon after all ballot boxes from last May’s polls are retrieved.

Former Pinamungahan Mayor Geraldine “Gaye” Yapha, who is contesting the victory of former governor Gwendolyn Garcia, said the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) will take the ballot boxes and other documents to Manila.

She said the final results can be expected in 29 working days or around the first week of January next year.

“Hopefully it will be done by that time whatever the result is. We just want to get this over and done with and for our questions on the huge number of stray ballots be answered,” she told Cebu Daily News.

Yapha, who ran under the Liberal Party, filed an election protest against One Cebu’s Garcia last July questioning the 41,858 stray ballots in the third district.

With Garcia winning by a slim margin of 1,984 votes, the number of stray ballots could make the difference in the recount which will be done manually and not by precinct optical scan (PCOS) machines.

In her protest, Yapha said massive electoral fraud took place in the distrct as part of an alleged “Operation Save the Queen” that was hatched to ensure the victory of the former governor and her allies.

Two weeks ago, Garcia appealed for the postponement of the retrieval of the ballot boxes due to the absence of a representative from her camp, saying she has deployed all of her staff members to areas damaged by supertyphoon Yolanda.

However, the HRET through Supreme Court Associate Justice Presbiterio Velasco denied the motion and emphasized the need for the election protest to be finished at “the shortest possible time.”

Members of the HRET and representatives from both parties first collected the ballot boxes from the towns of Aloguinsan, Pinamungahan and Asturias, Yapha said.

The ballot boxes from Balamban, Tuburan, Toledo and Barili were retrieved this week, she said.

“If you really look at it, the retrieval is already done and we can now proceed into the recounting. We are just hoping for the best,” Yapha said. /Correspondent Peter L. Romanillos