Comelec asked: What happened to case vs Pineda?

SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga, Philippines – A lawyer of Gov. Eddie Panlilio asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday to explain why it never acted on a petition filed in 2007 seeking to disqualify former provincial board member Lilia Pineda from the gubernatorial race.

The petition has mysteriously vanished, said lawyer Ernesto Francisco in a text message to The STAR.

This, even as Francisco lamented the apparent “indecent haste” with which the Comelec is doing the recount of gubernatorial votes cast in the 2007 polls, as petitioned by Pineda.

Last Wednesday, Panlilio, who won over Pineda by 1,147 votes, petitioned the Comelec to suspend the recount for three weeks to enable him to raise funds to pay his revisors in the recount. On the same day, the poll body junked his petition.

“Motions being filed by Gov. Panlilio are being denied on the same day that the said motions are filed. Yet, this very important action – a petition for disqualification on the ground of vote-buying no less – has not moved, much less has it been resolved to date, despite the lapse of more than two years since it was filed,” Francisco said in his petition. 

The STAR tried to reach Pineda, but a member of her staff said she would rather not comment and instead wait for the outcome of the recount.

Francisco recalled that on May 11, 2007, former Panlilio supporter Averell Laquindanum filed the petition to disqualify Pineda.

In his complaint, Laquindanum said Pineda engaged in “vote-buying by offering to give or giving or promising money or anything of value in violation of Article 261 (a) of the Omnibus Election Code as would warrant her disqualification pursuant to Section 68 likewise of the Omnibus Election Code.”

Provincial Comelec supervisor Temmie Lambino confirmed that he received the complaint “a long time ago” and that he forwarded it to the poll body’s clerk for resolution by the Comelec central office.

“Pineda did not win, so ordinarily the Comelec would formally dismiss the case as moot and academic,” he said.

But Lambino admitted that he has never received a copy of any resolution from the Comelec central office on the case.

Last Aug. 27, Francisco said he also inquired from the Comelec’s law department about the case, but no one could tell him what happened to it after it was transmitted to the poll body.      – With Sheila Crisostomo