CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – It’s reportedly a record breaker in Philippine electoral history.
An election protest involving the mayoral post of Candaba, Pampanga was decided in record time of 14 days by the judge of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) here.
Election lawyer Romulo Macalantal, in a telephone interview, described it as the “fastest decision ever on a local protest in the history of Philippine elections.”
In a seven-page order issued on June 10 by Judge Divina Luz Aquino-Simbulan of RTC Branch 41 here, the election protest filed on May 27 by losing candidate Reynaldo Sagum against mayor-elect Rene Maglanque was dismissed for “insufficiency in form and substance.”
In the last polls, Maglanque was credited with 14,730 votes as against Sagum’s 14,039 votes or a vote-lead of 691 in favor of the former.
Sagum later protested the results in all the 92 clustered precincts in the town.
Maglanque, through his lawyers Macalintal and Antonio Carlos Bautista, filed a motion to dismiss Sagum’s protest which they said was based on “bare, general and scattershot allegations of election fraud and irregularities.”
“An election protest must state a detailed specification of the acts and omissions complained of showing the electoral frauds, anomalies or irregularities in the protested precincts,” the lawyers argued.
In his complaint, Sagum alleged that “concerted acts of electoral fraud and illegal acts were employed by Maglanque, his supporters and followers during the voting and counting of ballots which resulted in the methodical reduction of his votes and the corresponding significant increase of Maglanque’s votes.”
Sagum also alleged that “hundreds of ballots with ballot votes for him were misread, miscounted or rejected by the PCOS machines” in all the 92 clustered precincts which he protested.
Simbulan, however, favored Maglanque’s argument.
The judge ruled that “considering that some of the grounds invoked by the protestant appear to be election offenses, there is no showing that protestant filed the corresponding election offenses against the perceived erring members of the Boards of Election Inspectors and other possible liable individuals.”
Simbulan cited the 1997 case of Pena vs House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal where the Supreme Court held that such allegations of massive electoral fraud and irregularities “without specification and substantiation of where and how these occurrences took place, will result to the failure of the election protest.”
Macalintal said that “this is not only the first election protest decided involving the 2013 elections, but also the first election protest ever in our electoral history to be resolved in record time of only fourteen days from its filing.”
”I hope that this prompt and speedy administration of justice demonstrated by Judge Simbulan would serve as a model of judicial concern in insuring political stability which is always threatened after an election because the results are oftentimes protested by politicians who cannot accept defeat in good grace”, Macalintal added.
