Guardo concedes to Mayor Osmeña

CEBU, Philippines - Businessman Jonathan “Atan” Guardo has conceded the Cebu City South District congressional race to Mayor Tomas R. Osmeña and offered his hand for reconciliation, but also raised some questions on the results in certain precincts.

Osmeña, who is on his final term as mayor of the city, however rejected Guardo’s offer for reconciliation saying that his opponent told a lot of lies during the campaign.

Guardo used to be Osmeña’s sports consultant, but their relationship soured when Cebu City became one of the co-hosts of the 23rd Southeast Asian Games in 2005.

Osmeña said that the Bando Osmeña Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK) has no room for Guardo.

“Cebu and BOPK has no place for him. He should migrate to Africa. Gusto ko pilde!” The mayor taunted his opponent during an interview with The Freeman referring to Guardo’s TV political advertisement “Gusto Ko Healthy,” which took a swipe at the health status of the mayor, who underwent surgery to remove a cancerous urinary bladder.

While Guardo said he has no grudges nor ill-feelings against the mayor as he only did his job as an opposition stalwart, he raised some doubts on the results of the polls.

 “I’m proud of our effort. We gave it our best shot. Congratulations to Congressman Osmeña and the rest of the BOPK. Wish them all the best,” Guardo said.

“I lost, but the margin is unbelievable. In one clustered precinct in Basak-Pardo I got zero. It’s hard to imagine that I’m zero out of the 1,000 voters. Asa na man diay ang botos sa akong poll watchers ug leaders?”

Meanwhile, BOPK candidates and their supporters may have the reason to celebrate even before the Commission on Election proclaims the winners this morning.

As of 7:38 pm last night, the board of election canvassers was able to tally the votes from 475 clustered precincts, or 85 percent of the total 560 clustered precincts.

Among the mayoralty candidates, Vice Mayor Michael Rama still leading with 180,721 votes followed by Alvin Garcia, who garnered so far 101,315 votes.

For vice mayor, former congressman Joy Young still leads with 193,830 votes, very much ahead Rodolfo Cabrera who only got 50,299 votes so far.

Osmeña got 110,261 votes compared to Jonathan Guardo’s 58, 609 votes.

In the north district, BOPK’s Rachel “Cutie” del Mar garnered 82,831 votes while her nearest rival, Mary Ann delos Santos of Kugi Uswag Sugbo, got 46, 930 votes.

The top nine councilors in the north district are Edgardo Labella (87,964), Augustus Pe, Jr. (81,332), Alvin Arcilla (75,758), Sisinio Andales (71,748), Lea Japson (70,331), Alvin Dizon (68,566), Noel Wenceslao (66,109), Nida Cabrera (63,452) and Joel Garganera (52,265).

In south district, the top nine councilors are Rodrigo Abellanosa (140,802), Margarita Osmeña (111,186), Eduardo Rama, Jr. (106,640), Jose Daluz III (100,860), Raul Alcoseba (99,593), Ronald Cuenco (90,226), Richard Osmeña (85,414), Roberto Cabarrubias (84,275) and Eugenio Gabuya, Jr. (55,098).

As of 2:58 pm yesterday, there were only 276 precincts that were able to transmit data via network signal.

The data from precincts that were not able to transmit was uploaded via the Compact Flash Disks sealed and transported from the precincts to the city canvassing area at the legislative building of the city hall.

Garcia said he will call for a press conference today to support Guardo in raising questions about the matter.

Garcia is also trailing by a wide margin in the partial count against Vice Mayor Michael Rama, who is BOPK’s standard bearer. Rama led Garcia by more than 50,000 votes yesterday afternoon.

Garcia was Osmeña’s vice mayor for two terms and also became city mayor for two terms until he had a falling off with the mayor.

In 2001, Osmeña challenged Garcia’s re-election bid and won. They had a return bout in 2004, which Osmeña also won.

While the automation of the elections has helped speed up the counting of votes, there have been some glitches in transmitting the results from the Precint Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines at the polling places to the canvassing center at City Hall.

This prompted the Board of Election Inspectors of the concerned precincts to hand carry the compact flash cards from the PCOS machines to the canvassing center so that the stored results can be generated. – with Jessica Ann R. Pareja/NLQ (THE FREEMAN)