Belmonte leading by a wide margin

The quick count of the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) showed yesterday that House Speaker Feliciano "Sonny" Belmonte is winning the Quezon City mayoralty race.

The tally conducted by NAMFREL indicated that Belmonte jumped to an early and comfortable margin over closest rival, actor-turned politician Rudy Fernandez.

The Speaker garnered 18,250 votes as of 2:40 p.m. yesterday compared to Fernandez’s 9,264 from the 287 local precincts canvassed. Representative Dante Liban was a distant third, accumulating a total of 1,372 votes.

The ABS-CBN count placed Belmonte leading with 118,715 votes over Fernandez’s 96,852.

According to Chester Yu, Namfrel coordinator, this early count concludes at least nine percent of the total votes cast. Yu said that although it is still too early to tell, this can be a projection of the final results.

"We expect to finish our count by Thursday night, although this can go on until Friday — depending on when we receive the election returns from the Commission on Elections (Comelec)," Yu said.

In the vice mayoralty race, Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino bet Herbert Bautista leads incumbent Vice Mayor Connie Angeles by some 8,000 votes, with Bautista garnering 18,159 votes and Angeles 10,862.

The city’s Fourth District congressional seats showed a much closer fight, with Nanette Daza’s 1,382 votes having a slim lead over Edcel Lagman’s 1,286. Outgoing Mayor Ismael Mathay Jr. is not far behind with 1,110 votes.

Mayor Mathay’s son Chuck, however, is way ahead of Councilor Winston Castelo in the congressional race in the Second District, with Mathay garnering 4,100 votes and Castelo 925 votes.

In the First District, re-electionist Reynaldo Calalay is poised to win over former councilor Moises Samson. Calalay so far, has 7,541 votes while Samson has 3,727.

In the city’s Third District, Maria Theresa Defensor may actually pull an upset over Sen. Nikki Coseteng. As of presstime, Defensor had 2,471 votes and Coseteng 1,675.