Recall bid vs Taytay mayor junked

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has junked a recall petition against Mayor Janet de Leon-Mercado of Taytay, Rizal province, saying it failed to comply with the requirements set by the law on recall elections.

In a decision dated April 22, the commission en banc ruled that the main petitioner, Milagros Monis, submitted an insufficient number of valid signatures for the recall election to push through against Mercado, with only 24,025 signatories.

“This is less than the 15-percent minimum requirement prescribed under Comelec Resolution No. 7505,” according to the decision.

It noted that the valid signatures in support of the petition constituted only 13. 5 percent of the 178,006 voting population of Taytay.

Monis earlier submitted a total of 27,431 signatures in support of her recall petition, but the Comelec did not count 3,406 entries as valid since some of them were just names without signatures and vice versa, while others had no corresponding addresses.

Monis filed a recall petition against Mercado in Jan. 29 at the local Office of the Election Officer, citing “loss of trust and confidence” among her reasons for questioning the mandate of the first-term mayor, a member of the Nationalist People’s Coalition. Jocelyn R. Uy