Comelec to review Taguig protest case

Manila, Philippines - An electoral protest filed against Taguig City Mayor Laarni Cayetano may be delayed as the Commission on Elections (Comelec) division now handling it is planning to review the case.

According to Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, who presides over the Comelec’s first division, they will look into an order of the second division to retrieve the contested ballots from the city treasurer of Taguig.

“We will be discussing it in the first division. We’ll study if we’ll also have them recalled or they will be retained (there),” he said in an interview.

Cayetano’s proclamation was challenged by defeated mayoralty bet Dante Tiñga, who claimed there had been fraud in the May 2010 polls in Taguig.

The case was initially handled by the second division but Cayetano’s husband, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, questioned the neutrality of the division and Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes, whom he accused of using the case to blackmail him. This prompted the division to transfer the case to Sarmiento’s division.

Cayetano, a member of the Commission on Appointments, accused Brillantes of attempting to use the poll protest to compel him to agree to his confirmation as Comelec chief. Brillantes has denied the allegation.

The senator maintained that Brillantes was Tiñga’s former lawyer, while a politician lobbying for Tiñga had helped Commissioner Elias Yusoph, a member of the second division, get back his son Nuraldin, who was abducted last year.

Sarmiento said they will also evaluate a complaint by the senator that while the case was 44th among poll protests filed with the Comelec, it was made fourth in the agency’s list of cases to be acted upon.

“We’ll look into that. Maybe because Taguig is one of the nearest areas with (an) electoral protest. But of course, we have to consider the side of the Cayetanos,” he added.