MORE NEWS, PAMPANGA

Supreme Court junks plea of Pampanga gov’s rival
By George Trillo

SAN FERNANDO, Pam­panga – The Supreme Court has denied a petition for it to reverse its status quo order preventing the Commission on Elections from transporting 4,847 ballot boxes to Manila for a recount of votes cast in last year’s gubernatorial polls.

Lawyer Ernesto Francisco, legal counsel of Pam­panga Gov. Ed Panlilio, told local media the SC issued recently a resolution junking the petition of former provincial board member Lilia Pineda, who lost to Panlilio in last year’s polls, to lift the status quo order it issued last February.

Earlier, the Comelec upheld the decision of its second division finding merit in the allegations of Pineda, official bet of the Kabalikat ng Mamamayang Pilipino party, that anomalies marked the gubernatorial polls.

This prompted Francisco and other volunteer lawyers of the priest-turned-governor, to bring the electoral issue before the SC, which subsequently issued the status quo order that prevented the transport of the 4,847 ballot boxes from 20 towns to the Comelec warehouse in Manila for a recount of votes.

Pineda, however, petitioned the SC to lift its status quo order, but the tribunal, finding no merit, junked her plea.

Romulo Macalintal, one of Panlilio’s volunteer lawyers, said Pineda’s protest against the governor “is clearly insufficient in form and substance because aside from being merely copied from other existing protests, the grounds are bare, general, and scattershot and intended merely to fish for evidence.”

“Pineda’s claim that the ballots from 4,847 precincts or about 500,000 ballots (were filled up) by one or two persons is really incredible since not a single ballot was even objected to by Pineda (during the count) at the precinct level,” he said.

“How could Panlilio who merely relied on volunteers and contributions from concerned citizens of Pampanga be guilty of vote buying?” he added.

For his part, Francisco said the Comelec acted with “grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction” in favoring Pineda’s electoral protest.