‘Fake’ ballots for Ecleo found

SURIGAO CITY — Revisors of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) have found allegedly questionable ballots as they began to open ballot boxes in connection with the poll protest against Rep. Glenda Ecleo of the first district of Surigao del Norte.

Ecleo is the mother of Ruben Ecleo, detained leader of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA) based on Dinagat Island in Surigao del Norte.

Ecleo’s son is awaiting trial in Cebu City for the murder of his wife Alona Bacolod. He surrendered after a clash last June 19 between law enforcers and his supporters on Dinagat Island, which claimed the lives of 17 people, mostly PBMA members.

The HRET has so far opened 183 of 500 ballot boxes from Siargao and Dinagat islands since last Sept. 12.

Former Rep. Constantino Herrera Navarro Jr. has questioned Ecleo’s victory, alleging massive fraud, vote-buying and terrorism.

Navarro’s camp charged that ballot boxes from the towns of Basilica and San Jose contained "fabricated" ballots printed on original security paper.

They also alleged that most of the supposed official ballots were filled out by a single individual, as evidenced by the common handwriting in the ballots.

HRET revisors were reportedly surprised that some ballots allegedly had an unusual form but were printed on authentic Commission on Elections (Comelec) paper.

These questionable ballots allegedly appeared to have been printed outside of the Comelec, since they allegedly had prints different from the other ballots.

The revisors also noticed that election returns allegedly contained eight-digit serial numbers, a digit more than those on the usual forms.

Navarro’s lawyers have filed a resolution with the HRET seeking a deeper inquiry into the findings of the revisors.

They claimed that the alleged anomalies unmasked so far from the ballots from San Jose and Basilica towns were conclusive enough to warrant a reversal of the election returns in Surigao del Norte’s first district.