Comelec rejects Panlilio plea for recount suspension

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections’ second division junked yesterday for lack of merit a petition of Pampanga Gov. Ed Panlilio seeking a three-week suspension of the ongoing recount of votes in the 2007 gubernatorial race to enable him to raise funds to monitor the process.

“We are not concerned about the financial capability of litigants. It’s not our problem. He has been bragging that he has many volunteers, maybe then can help him,” said Comelec Commissioner Nicodemo Ferrer, who chairs the second division.

In a manifestation and motion prepared by his lawyers Ernesto Francisco, Sixto Brillantes, and Pete Quadra, Panlilio said the ongoing revision of ballots “imposes a very heavy financial burden” on him and “to date, has drained” his meager available funds. 

Panlilio said he has to spend and has been spending P550 per revisor per day, over and above the same daily fees of his five alternate revisors and the P2,000 per diem of his lone supervising revisor, plus the added cost of photocopying the revised ballots.

He said his total disbursements on a daily basis amount to “a staggering sum of approximately about P30,000.”

Panlilio said his funds, mostly from donations of supporters, are expected to be exhausted in three days.

Earlier, Panlilio, whose priestly authority was suspended by San Fernando Archbishop Paciano Aniceto when he ran for governor in the 2007 polls, earlier had said his assets were worth only about P700,000, including his motorcycle and old van.

Panlilio asked the Comelec to suspend the recount starting Sept. 7.

Should the poll body, in “a remote event,” refuse his plea, Panlilio said he would “be forced to cease assigning revisors to the ongoing revision; with the option to return with a few, some of several of the said revisors, should he be able to raise some extra funds to appropriately compensate them.”

But this, he warned, would make the recount “obviously a one-sided exercise with only the revisors of the protestant in attendance.”

The recount stemmed from the electoral protest filed by former provincial board member Lilia Pineda who ran and lost to Panlilio by 1,147 votes.

Pineda, mother of Pampanga Mayors’ League president Lubao Mayor Dennis Pineda, ran under the administration Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (Kampi).

Pineda alleged that there was “misreading and misappreciation of ballots, insertion of face or unofficial ballots, fraud and other election anomalies, ‘dagdag-bawas’ and vote buying” during the 2007 gubernatorial polls.

Pastors from various Christian denominations in Pampanga recently formed the Pampanga Christian Ministers’ Council to assert that they believed in the “integrity” of the 2007 local elections.

They also started a fundraising drive to help Panlilio defray the cost of monitoring the recount being done at the Comelec central office in Manila.