Cebu City blocs agree to speed up canvassing

CEBU CITY — Teachers who served as election inspectors in precincts with questionable and contested election returns will be summoned by the city’s board of canvassers to explain the discrepancies.

This was the agreement forged by lawyers of former mayor Tomas Osmeña’s Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan and incumbent Mayor Alvin Garcia’s Kugi Uswag Sugbu and city election officials to speed up the canvassing of election returns.

The lawyers of both parties and officials of the Commission on Elections’ local office agreed that summoning teachers who served in precincts with contested election returns was a better option than deferring the canvassing of these contested documents.

Teachers from at least 10 precincts in Barangays Pulangbato, Labangon, Bacayan, Day-as and Zapatera appeared before the canvassing board the other day and went over the election returns from their respective precincts.

Lawyers from both parties have questioned at least 44 election returns either because of formal defects or the lack of signatures of the members of the board of election inspectors.

Formal defects refer to the lack of data relative to the number of votes cast and the number of registered voters, on the upper right-hand corner of an election return.

Two other election returns were discovered the other day to have more votes cast than the actual number of registered voters.

City election officer Simaco Labata admonished the teachers for not filling in the formal data on the election returns immediately after the elections.

Some of them claimed they were already too tired when the time came for them to fill out the election returns.

Teachers in Precincts 98-A and 541-A, whose election returns had figures that did not add up, were scheduled to appear before the canvassing board yesterday to explain the discrepancy in the returns they had submitted.

The failure of the teachers to fill in the necessary information has severely delayed the canvassing of votes in the city which has 1,984 precincts.

In previous interviews, Labata said they are mandated by law to finish the canvassing 72 hours after the elections.

City schools superintendent Leonilo Oliva said they are targeting to have at least 200 election returns canvassed daily to wrap up the canvassing soonest.

BO-PK lawyers, however, are blaming the slow pace of the canvassing to the constant objections of Kusug lawyers to election returns where BO-PK’s Osmeña was getting more votes than Kusug’s Garcia.

Kusug lawyer Jess Garcia, the incumbent mayor’s son, however, denied the allegation.

Kusug head lawyer Julius Neri Sr. claimed the mayor’s party is not delaying the canvassing, but is, in fact, speeding it up.

Neri alleged that the board has not been following Comelec procedures. — Freeman News Service