Samar recall bid: Signature check is 60% done

CATBALOGAN CITY—The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has allowed its office in Samar to get an extension of six days to finish verifying hundreds of signatures attached to a recall petition, now 60 percent complete, that seeks to hold new elections in the province to oust its governor and vice governor.

Gov. Sharee Ann Tan and her brother, Vice Gov. Stephen James Tan, faces a recall petition that accused them of incompetence in running the provincial government and serving as mere dummies of their mother, former governor and now Rep. Milagros Tan.

The Tan siblings have denied the accusation, saying the recall move was plain political harassment coming from detractors of their mother, who was suspended for 90 days for graft during her term as governor over a case involving the impoverished province’s calamity funds.

The Comelec gave its Samar office until Dec. 1 to complete the verification process, said provincial election supervisor Maria Corazon Montallana.

“With the new extension, we can now finish the verification of the signatures,” Montallana said.

As of Thursday morning, the Comelec verified 45,607 of 73,889 signatures, or 61.72 percent, attached to the recall petition against the governor.

In the case of the recall petition against the vice governor, the Comelec verified 62 percent of the signatures, or 45,427, of a total of 73,250 signatures.

For the recall bid to succeed, the petitioners need to get the signatures of 10 percent out of the more than 450,000 registered voters of Samar.

The Tan camp earlier claimed that several of the signatures attached to the petition were forged.

Proponents of the recall petition, however, said people who signed the petition out of sheer disgust with the way the province was being governed were willing to execute affidavits attesting to the authenticity of their signatures in the recall document.

After the verification process, the Comelec is expected to declare the recall petition sufficiently supported by the right number of voters and schedule elections for governor and vice governor.

The verification of signatures had been delayed by objections and questions from both the Tan camp and the camp of those seeking the siblings’ ouster.

Comelec officials in the province, however, said the process was moving and is expected to be complete by next month.