MAGALANG, Pampanga – An air of uncertainty still hangs in this bucolic town as the result in the tightly contested mayoralty race was delayed due to technical glitches in the SD cards of the vote counting machines (VCMs).
As of 10:05 am. Thursday, former mayor Romy Pecson is leading his rival with 24,560 votes as against incumbent Mayor Malu Lacson with 24,266 with 89.77 percent of the votes tallied.
Only 294 votes separate the candidates, considered a slim margin, as the last votes are about to be tallied by the Board of Canvassers (BOC).
It was reported that votes coming from 16 clustered precincts still remain uncounted after the SD cards of VCMs were purportedly corrupted.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) local office suspended the counting while waiting for the SD cards to be reconfigured by the agency’s regional office Wednesday, May 15.
This developed as Lacson called on her supporters to remain calm and wait for the official election results.
“I understand that the glitches in the official counting of votes are causing unrest to the people of Magalang,” Lacson said.
Lacson said she is “saddened” by the delay of the election results and hopes that the votes would come in and would be officially counted as soon as possible.
Lacson said her team “One Magalang” advocates for clean and honest elections and assures the public that they will not act on anything that would taint the sanctity of the election as she called on her rival to do the same.
Lacson said the local government unit suspended work at the municipal hall to prevent any untoward incident and protect the ongoing counting of votes by the BOC.
Lacson said she remains hopeful that she will get the highest number of votes after all the votes are tallied.
