Barbers to Comelec: Review revision procedures

MANILA, Philippines - Former Surigao del Norte governor Robert Ace Barbers has asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to review its revision procedures for electoral protests to effectively decide on who really won in the May 2010 polls.

Barbers has a pending petition with the Comelec questioning the proclamation of Gov. Sol Matugas, alleging cheating in the province in last year’s polls.

In a letter to Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes, Barbers criticized the poll agency’s revision committee for ignoring the complaints of his revisors during the actual revision of ballots last Oct. 11 to 13.

Barbers said his revisors have called the committee’s attention to the “unusual and material pattern-voting scheme” in more than 800 contested ballots from the province.

The revisors also complained about “noticeable and patent differences in the signatures of the chairman of the Board of Election Inspectors.”

“Regrettably, the objections raised by my revisors were set aside by the revision committee on the expedience that the person who signed may have been already tired,” he said.

Barbers added that the committee had “brushed aside” his revisors’ findings which “were merely recorded as narrative observations in the recount reports, not as valid objections.”

He said the procedures adopted by the Comelec in revising ballots are “highly improper and not in accord with the very purpose of the revision and constitute a blatant disregard to our election laws and procedures.”

In the first place, he said the committee had no authority to determine the “validity and/or propriety of the claims and objections of the parties.”

“I believe that the power to rule on the validity and/or propriety of the claims and objections raised by the parties to the election protest is an exercise of a quasi-judicial power, granted by no less than the 1987 Constitution to this Honorable Commission. It cannot be delegated, much less, relinquished to the revision committees for the sake of expedience and for whatever reason,” he said.

Barbers added that by allowing the revision committees to do that “defeated the purpose of the revision of ballots” and denied a defeated candidate of “legal remedies of protest.”