7 months after term expired Supreme Court: Tining won the 2007 congressional race

CEBU, Philippines - Seven months after the May 2010 elections, the Supreme Court (SC) declared that it was former Bogo mayor Celestino “Tining” A. Martinez III who won the May 14, 2007 elections.

The High Court issued the decision on January 11, 2010.

The SC states its decision as immediately executory but the term of Martinez already expired in June last year.

Martinez, though, was able to sit as congressman in the last few days before the previous Congress adjourned.

The High Tribunal in its decision yesterday granted the petition for certiorari filed by Martinez.

It declared annulled the decision dated May 28, 2009 and resolution dated July 30, 2009 of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) Case No. 07-035. These HRET decisions had declared Salimbangon as the winner.

On July 9, 2007, Salimbangon was proclaimed winner in the congressional elections for the fourth district for garnering 67,277 votes as against Martinez’s 67,173 votes, or a difference of 104 votes. 

Martinez filed an election protest on July 18, 2007 and on July 26, 2007, the HRET granted his motion to convert the same into a regular protest of all the 1,129 precincts of the district.

The election protest was based on more or less 300 ballots with only "MARTINEZ" or "C. MARTINEZ" written on the line for representative. The Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) did not count these for Tining on the ground that there was another congressional candidate who had the same surname, Edilito C. Martinez.

Martinez further alleged that he lost several thousand votes as a result of incorrect appreciation of ballots not counted in his favor while the “clearly marked ballots, groups of ballots which appeared to have been prepared by one person, individual ballots which appeared to have been prepared by two or more persons, and fake and unofficial ballots,” were read and counted in favor of Salimbangon. 

He also claimed that the votes reflected in the election returns were unlawfully increased in favor of Salimbangon while votes in his favor were unlawfully decreased. 

Salimbangon filed his answer with counter-protest stating that the minutes of voting (MOV) inside the ballot boxes in all the protested precincts contain no recorded objections regarding the stray votes claimed by Martinez, and that it was very seldom, if at all, that there were ballots with only "MARTINEZ" or "C. MARTINEZ" written.

He filed counter-protests for 954 precincts on grounds of coercion/intimidation and duress; massive vote-buying; misreading, miscounting or misappreciation of votes and other alleged electoral anomalies.

The High Court ruled that the ballots indicating only the similar surname of two candidates for the same position may, in appropriate cases, be counted in favor of the bona fide candidate and not considered stray, even if the other candidate was declared a nuisance candidate by final judgment after the elections.

Accordingly, the decision added, the 5,401 votes for "Martinez " or "C. Martinez" should be credited to Martinez giving him a total of 72,056 votes as against Salimbangon’s 67,108 votes.

“Petitioner thus garnered more votes than private respondent with a winning margin of 4,948 votes,” the decision reads.

Tining ran again as congressman last May 10, 2010 elections but lost to Salimbangon with a margin of over 70,000 votes. Salimbangon got over 137,000 votes while Tining got around 66,000 votes. – (FREEMAN)