Negros Oriental poll case Recount shows "disenfranchisement"?

CEBU, Philippines - Physical counting of questioned ballots in the 1st district of Negros Oriental revealed plenty of blanks for the congressional position, which may have resulted in the "massive disenfranchisement of voters."

This statement was contained in the daily statistics report of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) where the election protest was lodged by congressional reelectionist Jerome "Jerry" Paras, who was defeated by now Rep. Emmanuel Iway.

Paras filed the election protest due to what he believed was the presence of massive fraud, cheating and other irregularities resulting in the unexplained, mysterious and unbelievably high number of blank votes for congressman in the 2013 elections.

In an interview, Paras said his doubts and suspicion of alleged fraud was confirmed by the results that showed 12,910 ballots had no votes and 1,476 ballots with over vote for the position he and Iway contested.

The contested results where the blank ballots were found only represented 30 percent of the entire number of votes in the 1st district, who actually voted in five municipalities, namely, Ayungon, Bindoy, Manjuyod, Tayasan and Vallehermoso. Paras said these areas were his bailiwick and that he expected at the time to win by high majority against Iway.

Records showed there were 191,000 voters who actually voted in that election in the 1st district, and yet there were only 138,000 votes that were tallied for the congressional candidates, leaving a "massive and statistically improbable missing and unaccounted votes of 53,000."

The defeated Paras alleged that such findings only confirmed that he has been correct in his claim that the election for congressman in the 1st district was marred by massive irregularities and manipulations, although he did not elaborate on how these were done, as the election was conducted using the PCOS machines.

"Let it be emphasized that the sheer magnitude of ballots with no vote and over vote is so alarming, disturbing and unbelievable considering that the position for congressman is one of the hotly contested positions in past elections in the district," claimed Paras.

Paras' counsels, headed by lawyer George Garcia, is now pushing for the invalidation of the results, and the call for an special election. The HRET however has yet to finish the recount of the contested ballots, and no final findings yet have been released, affirming the claims of Paras. (FREEMAN)