Lim, Peña won’t yield in Manila, Makati battles

Losing mayoral candidates Alfredo Lim of Manila and Romulo “Kid” Peña of Makati City are not waving the white flag just yet.

The two Liberal Party members and their legal teams are studying their next moves that could spoil the party of the declared winners in two of the most-watched local races in the May 9 elections, the Inquirer learned on Wednesday.

A day after election officials proclaimed reelectionist Mayor Joseph Estrada as the winner in Manila by a margin of only 2,685 votes, Lim’s legal counsel Renato dela Cruz said “we are preparing to seek the annulment of Estrada’s proclamation.”

Another member of Lim’s team said they were investigating why some of the vote counting machines (VCMs) used in the city were brought to the canvassing center at Rizal Memorial Stadium more than 10 hours after the polling centers were closed. The VCMs had to be manually opened after failing to remotely transmit results from their assigned precincts.

Most of the VCMs that had to be transported to the stadium came from the so-called “Lim territory,” such as Tondo, he noted.

Proclaimed on Tuesday after a canvassing that took 17 hours to finish, Estrada garnered 283,149 votes to top Lim’s 280,464. When the two veteran politicians faced off in 2013, Estrada defeated the then reelectionist Lim by a wider gap of about 33,000 votes.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Estrada, who said he didn’t expect Monday’s poll to be that close, had a simple advice for Lim: “Retire.”

“The people still trust me. They chose me in 2013 as their mayor, and they chose me again now,” he said, adding that the victory of his vice mayoral candidate Honey Lacuña may be considered “a bonus.”

In Makati, incumbent Mayor Peña, who has yet to concede defeat to Rep. Abigail Binay, issued a brief statement addressed to his supporters:  “I understand that you are all emotional but I hope we all set this aside first to avoid any trouble. We are continuously studying everything to shed light on this issue.”

Peña was referring to allegations of vote manipulation in the city’s District 2, Binay’s turf. Poll watchers for the mayor claimed there were four precincts at Pembo Elementary School where he received zero votes, prompting them to barricade the campus Monday night to stop the teachers from turning over the election returns to the Makati Coliseum for canvassing.

In an interview before was declared winner early Tuesday morning, Binay said “they (Peña supporters) cannot interfere with the transmission of results because that is an election offense. It is also a sign of desperation. It seems that they do not want to respect the results and even want to do a manual count.”

Her camp could not be accused of election fraud since they were not the ones in power, said Binay, who led Peña by about 16,000 votes. “We are not administration candidates. He (Peña) has the machinery to do that.” With Angelica Cruz and John Cyril Yee