MORE NEWS, PAMPANGA

No funds for special polls, says Comelec on oust Panlilio move
By George Trillo

SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – Commission on Elections field officer for Central Luzon Teresita Ocampo said the initiative seeking the recall of Gov. Eddie Panlilio and calling for the holding of special gubernatorial elections in this province would not be realized.

“It don’t think it will push through,” she said. “We don’t have funds.”

Tolentino said she is in charge of all election matters, including recall petitions, in Central Luzon as regional field officer under the office of the Comelec’s executive director for operations.

Ocampo said there are 18 recall petitions all over the country now pending before the Comelec.

“We have to receive the petitions, but we don’t have the funds for them,” she said, noting that not a single petition has even been declared sufficient in form and substance.

At the outset of the recall petition initiated by the local group Kapanalig at Kambilan neng Memalen Pampanga (Kambilan), Panlilio’s lawyer Romulo Macalintal, downplayed the move saying the Comelec has no funds for the holding of special gubernatorial polls saying the recall move would be an exercise in futility.

Tolentino said the Comelec has only a P5-million allocation for special polls that could be triggered by recall petitions.

“That’s what was allocated by law and any additional budget will have to pass through Congress,” she said.

Provincial Comelec supervisor Temmie Lambino said over P100 million was spent in last year’s polls in this province.

“A huge chunk of the funds went to the payment of members of the board of election inspectors,” he said.

Since the Local Government Code and Comelec Resolution No. 7705 provides that no recall petition could be pursued within one year before the holding of another election for the contested position, the possibility of additional congressional allocation becomes more unlikely as this will consume more time, said a local Comelec official who asked not to be named.

By May next year or one year before the 2010 May elections, any recall move can no longer be initiated.

But Ocampo said if funds are made available and the required 10 percent or about 100,000 signatures of the province’s 977,000 registered voters are garnered this month, special gubernatorial elections could be held within the year.

Since the recall petition concerns a provincial official, it will have to be submitted to the Comelec provincial office which is mandated to validate the signatures within 15 days or, if extended, within 25 days at most.

The validation would be done with the help of the 21 Comelec offices in all Pampanga towns and once validated, the recall petition would be forwarded to the Comelec central office for decision by all the commissioners.




Jueteng main cause of Panlilio’s troubles?
By George Trillo

SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – The “evil and illegal tentacles” of jueteng is now being suspected as hounding the administration of suspended priest Gov. Eddie Panlilio with local priests belonging to a group they called Prayer Warriors challenging the governor to choose between being governor and being priest.

A source who asked not to be named said some members of the Prayer Warriors are closely identified with former provincial board member Lilia Pineda whom Panlilio defeated in the gubernatorial polls by 1,147 votes.

One of the priests is said to be a close relative of Pineda’s husband, Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda
against whom Panlilio filed charges of plunder before the Office of the Ombudsman earlier this year.

Fr. Roland Moraleja of the San Fernando archdiocese chancery here, said his group had been against Panlilio’s entry into politics when the latter accepted the plea of local civil society groups to run for governor in last year’s elections.

He said priests who are elected to political posts violate the Canon Law of the Catholic Church.

Fr. Jun Mercado, spokesperson of Prayer Warriors, said Panlilio has remained a priest, although his priestly powers were suspended when he opted to run for governor and won.

Moraleja cited the case of former Bishop Fernando Lugo who stepped down as bishop to assume the presidency of Paraguay on Aug. 15.

Lugo, who won last April’s elections in Paraguay, resigned as a bishop in 2006 when he decided to run for president, saying he felt unable to help the poor as a clergyman.

The Vatican had previously refused to recognize Lugo’s resignation, saying he was still a bishop since his ordination was a lifelong sacrament, and demanded that he cease all political activities.

But Moraleja said the Vatican eventually “lai­cized” Lugo or declared him a layman. Orlando Antonini, the papal nuncio to Paraguay, was quoted as saying that Lugo was the first church official to be “laicized,” but that there had been other priests the Pope had reverted to the status of a layman.

Without a special dispensation from the Pope, priests holding political office risk being excommunicated by the Catholic Church, Prayer Warrior members said.

Panlilio himself has repeatedly said he has remained a priest, although his priestly powers remain under suspension.

Members of Prayer Warriors met here the other day with the Kapanalig at Kambilan neng Memalen Pampanga (Kambilan) which initiated the recall petition against Panlilio whom the latter accused of having lost the confidence of the Pampanga electorate.

Kambilan president Rosve Henson said that as of Monday, 30,000 voters volunteered to be members of his group and had signed the petition which needs 100,000 signatures to pave the way for the holding of special gubernatorial polls in this province.

Kambilan’s list showed apart from Moraleja and Mercado, the other active Pam­panga priests who attended the meeting were Fathers Joel Tubig, Eric de Guzman, Rustom Tanglao, Lyndon Valenton, Mar Miranda, Bong Gopez, Miles Lacanlale, Simeon Pabustan, Alfred David, Roland Lopez, Gabriel Torres, Jun Mercado, Tony Ocampo and Jay Salvador. The only retired priest was Fr. Guido Aliwalas who, at 91, is reportedly the oldest priest in Pampanga.

None of the priests, how­ever, signed the recall petition during the meeting, but Henson said he expected 15 of them to eventually sign.

Fr. Restie Lumanlan, president of the Kapampangan Coalition, Inc., said the controversies affecting Panlilio has indeed already affected the local church, amid reports that other priests have remained supportive of the governor.

While Lumanlan said his group is not supporting the recall petition, it had urged Panlilio way back in May to fire lawyer Vivian Dabu as provincial administrator, saying she had been the problem of the Panlilio administration at the start of the governor’s term.