City lacks over 100 ballot boxes

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu City treasurer Emma Villarete yesterday said that the city might have a shortage of over 100 ballot boxes in the coming May 13 elections because of the pending election protest filed by Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Mar Roxas against Vice President Jejomar Binay.

Villarete said there are 550 ballot boxes currently stored in a warehouse containing the protested results. She said only 412 of these ballot boxes can be used in the coming elections because the remaining 137 boxes will be used to keep the protested results in 2010.

Villarete said that election officer Marchel Sarno has already scheduled on March 18 to consolidate the protested results from every four ballot boxes into one ballot box. Representatives of C-CIMPEL, United Nationalist Alliance (Team Rama), Liberal Party (BOPK), Kugi Uswag Sugbo (KUSUG), and the Provincial Electoral Tribunal were already informed about it.

According to Villarete, Cebu City has a total of 526 clustered precincts but the available ballot boxes are only 412. She said they would have a shortage of 114 ballot boxes.

“Nahibalo na man g’yud hinoon ang mga opisyal sa Comelec nga kuwang g’yud ang mga ballot boxes (Comelec officials knew that we lack ballot boxes),” Villarete said.

Roxas, who was President Benigno Aquino III’s runningmate in the 2010 elections, filed an election protest against Binay.

Roxas asked the Presidential Electoral Tribunal to look into the close to 3 million votes that were allegedly not counted by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines.

He claimed that the null votes could easily erase the 727,084-vote margin of Binay over him. Roxas said null votes were not counted because the ballots were incorrectly shaded or because more than one oval was shaded for an elective position. —/FPL (FREEMAN)