LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The first division of the Commission on Elections has granted a petition for certiorari seeking to stop a court here from proceeding with the hearing of an election case filed against Tuba (Benguet) Mayor Florencio Bentrez.
In its resolution granting the petition filed by the mayor, the Comelec ruled that Judge Benigno Galcgac of the Regional Trial Court Branch 63 acted with grave abuse of discretion when he denied a motion filed by Bentrez’s camp to dismiss an election protest filed by his rival, Ignacio Rivera.
The Comelec also ordered the court to stop conducting hearings on the election protest as it dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction.
The resolution stated the trial court did not acquire jurisdiction of the election protest due to the insufficient payment of filing fees and cash deposits and that it acted with grave abuse of discretion in denying the motion to dismiss.
Bentrez earlier petitioned the court to dismiss the election protest filed by Rivera on the ground that the latter failed to pay the cash deposit for the election protest.
He said due to Rivera’s failure to pay the required cash deposit, the court has not acquired jurisdiction over the election protest, and the case should be dismissed outright.
Rivera paid only P23,000 which is equivalent to P500 per ballot box for the revision of the ballots in 46 boxes that he had protested.
Comelec rules provide petitioners in an election case should pay P1,000 for each precinct and that in no case shall the deposit be less than P25,000 to be paid upon the filing of the protest.
During the May 14, elections, Bentrez won the mayoralty race in Tuba when he garnered 4,752 votes. Rivera came in second with 4,334 votes.
But Rivera claimed there was massive fraud during the counting of votes in the precincts, alleging that his watchers were not allowed by the members of the board of election inspectors to watch the proceedings and were ordered to perform other duties.
There was massive misreading of votes cast for him.
Based on the initial revision of ballots conducted by the court, there were at least 2,600 questionable ballots that were reportedly counted in the favor of Bentrez when the same were of dubious authenticity.
Rivera is expected to file a motion for reconsideration of the Comelec’s resolution, saying that he was able to pay the protest fees and cash deposits required by law.
No comments:
Post a Comment