BEHIND
THE SCENES
Alfred
P. Dizon
BONTOC, Mountain
Province – It may have something with the row between Commission on Elections
Chairman Andres Bautista and the poll body’s commissioners that the Comelec was
not able to address the controversy sooner on who should legitimately sit as
Mountain Province governor.
Suffice to say
the poll body was able to avert mayhem at the Provincial Capitol here in the
nick of time with apprehensive employees and the public not knowing whom to
deal with as provincial governor. Constituents and officials had been urging
the Comelecto settle the matter before June 30 when new officials assumed
office but that is now water under the bridge.
***
Last week, this province had two “governors” after
the vice governor and a “non-candidate” took their oath. Re-electionist Vice Gov. BonifacioLacwasan
Jr. took his oath as vice governor then as governor June 30 while Kathy
Jyll Mayaen-Luis daughter of the late Gov. Leonard Mayaen, took her oath as
governor a day earlier despite legal suits against her.
Lacwasan said earlier he will sit as provincial
governor even as former Mountain Province Elections supervisor Elenita Tabangin-Capuyan
said unless Comelec grants an injunction, Mayaen-Luis should be recognized as
governor. The Comelec granted the injunction ordering Mayaen-Luis not to assume
office as governor giving mandate to Lacwasan to assume the position
***
At presstime, Lacwasan had occupied the governor’s
office while Mayaen-Luis reportedly conceded to the Comelec rule and was nowhere
to be found.
That was a hard lesson for Mayaen-Luis, according
to observers who said should not have filed to substitute her father, the late
Gov. Leonard Mayaenwho died March 31 due to cardiac arrest after filing his
candidacy for governor in the May polls.
Mayaen-Luis filed a petition with the Comelec to
substitute for her father as gubernatorial bet during the May elections but this
was denied by the poll body. The Comelec said substitution in this case was
illegal since the former governor ran as independent without political party.
Despite this, the provincial board of canvassers
raised her hand as winner during the electoral gubernatorial contest even if it
was stated in documents it was her father who won.
***
Tabangin-Capuyan who headed the PBOC in proclaiming
Mayaen-Luis as governor said a hearing by the Comelec en banc will be heard on
July 5 regarding annulment of proclamation of Kathy Jyll as governor.
We wonder what
Mayaen-Luis had in mind when she allowed her hand to be raised by the PBOC purportedly
for winning as “governor.” We also wonder
why the PBOC raised her hand to signify that she “won” as governor when the
Comelec en banc earlier ruled she could not substitute for her father. Did
somebody weave a magic spell on them?
If a lot of people
questioned her “assumption” as governor, our neighborhood perennially drunk
philosopher, like the others, said it is because they felt she didn’t deserve
it since it was her father who ran for the position, not her.
***
Basing from
provincial constituents and officials I talked to, Mayaen-Luis should have waited instead to file her candidacy for
special elections for the gubernatorial position to be scheduled by the Comelec
before the end of this year as announced by Bautista.
Folks say a daw-es should be held tapnu gawis nan daldalanena (walk the good
path.) It would be better, they say, for her to desist from whatever legal
options she is considering to end divisiveness her actions caused in the
province. A daw-es (cleansing ritual) could also be considered by the amam-ato ward off evil spirits who may
have bewitched some characters in this play.
If the Comelec didn’t
end this zarzuela, Mountain Province would have had become more popular as a
tourist spot with people coming from all over to see how two governors work
side by side and how people transact business at the capitol with two
governors.
***
The Comelec unknowingly
averted educational tours or lakbay-aral of officials from all over the country
coming to this capital town to observe how this is done.After all this country
is not called Banana Republic for nothing.
Meanwhile, it is
not necessary anymore to contact officials of the Guinness Book of World
Records to enter this province’s distinction of having two indigenous governors
at the same time.
***
Now that the
controversy was apparently settled, indeed, somebody should organize a native
rite, open a black pig’s innards and let a distinguished am-ama see where the bile is located to determine where the
province is headed to. Next time this happ ens, a black pig could decide who
should sit as governor. Enough of this or we could stray to the remote Spratlys
where the Chinese could teach us lessons on how to be decisive in making decisions – Kabunian forbid -- like
grabbing property, positions or moolah.
***
On the national
level, barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections before the end of this year
could be jeopardized with the rift in the Comelec which seems to have taken a
turn for the worse, as three commissioners plan to boycott the polls.
Comelec
Commissioner Rowena Guanzon said that she and her fellow First Division
commissioners Christian Robert Lim and LuieGuia have decided not to participate
in the conduct of the two polls.
***
In press
statements and television interviews, Guanzon claimed that in line with the May
9 polls, Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista had passed to them some
responsibilities that the poll chief should have been doing. “Perhaps it’s
about time that Chairman Bautista run the elections. You know it’s better that
he does it all by himself because you can give credit where credit is due,” she
added.
Guanzon and the
other commissioners may be smarting for not being appreciated as Bautista is
but she said they would be involved in full- bench deliberations regarding the
purchase of election paraphernalia for the synchronized elections and other
transactions.
“We actually
don’t have the duty to do that as commissioners. We don’t have the duty of
involving ourselves in operations. Our job is policy-making and quasi-judicial
but, of course, if he needs my help, I have a lot of experience in manual
elections, how can I refuse him?” she said.
***
Guanzon said
that Bautista, as head of Comelec, is mandated to notify agencies, stakeholders
and users about the hacking of the website.But, instead, he appointed Lim and
Commissioner Al Parreño so the two were the ones subpoenaed by the National
Privacy Commission.
“The director of
the Information Technology Department is directly under his supervision. It is
very unfair that commissioners have to take responsibility for something that
by law is not their job,” she said.
Guanzon added
they want to focus on the cases pending in their division but that they would
be joining deliberations on issues related to the barangay and SK polls.
*** During the
recent polls, Guanzon was in charge of the Local Absentee Voting while Guia
handled the people with disabilities and indigenous people and the Random
Manual Audit.Lim, on the other hand, was the head of the steering committee and
of the Campaign Finance Office.
For his part,
Bautista had expressed sadness over such development as he hopes that it would
not overshadow the success of the recent elections.“This is saddening because
we were really able to make our elections successful. What’s happening now may
cause concern among the people,” he told reporters.
Bautista also
denied Guanzon’s accusation that he was passing his responsibilities to the
other commissioners.
“That’s a lie.
In fact there are 26 memos detailing what we have done concerning the hacking,”
he said.He said that even the June 3 memorandum of the six commissioners
detailing his “failure of leadership” was “not factually accurate.”
“We have to act
in a professional manner. That’s all we need. There are no issues that we
cannot address as long as we have respect and courtesy for each other,” he added.
***
Meanwhile, will
the Comelec en banc please settle the gubernatorial issue in Mountain Province
or a tribal war would commence if a pig’s bile is not positioned correctly.
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