CLARK FREEPORT – An ongoing electoral controversy in Paniqui, Tarlac could destroy the credibility of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines used by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) during elections, if the results of a vote recount there prove to be true.
Paniqui Mayor Miguel Rivilla noted this, after a recount of votes cast in the 2013 polls in his town allegedly showed that PCOS machines used in his town purportedly erred by 3,684 votes in the mayoralty race. “If this is true, it would put under question the credibility of PCOS machines,” Rivilla said in a press conference here with the Capampangans In Media, Inc. (CAMI).
The Comelec is planning to buy more than 120,000 new PCOS machines worth almost P11 billion for the 2016 presidential elections. The recount was petitioned by rival Rommel David of the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) who lost by over 3,000 votes to Rivilla, who ran as independent in the last mayoral elections in Paniqui, a first class town in the northern 1st district of Tarlac.
Initially, votes from 15 clustered precincts showed Rivilla with 4,238 votes, but the recount allegedly showed only 554 of the mayoral votes were valid, while the other 3,684 ballots were invalid allegedly because their spaces for mayor were double shaded.
“If they were double shaded, the PCOS machines should not have counted the votes for mayor in the first place,” Rivilla noted. He, however, expressed suspicion that the recounted ballots were tampered with by double shading for the recount.
He noted that only votes in his favor were double shaded and thus invalid. Rivilla said that before the recount, his camp wanted the picture ballots in the PCOS machines’ CF cards to be used, but this was not granted by the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Paniqui.
“It would be harder to tamper with the picture ballots,” he noted. Rivilla noted that after he was reelected for a third term last year, Ramos filed twice an electoral protest against him before the local RTC which dismissed both complaints.
He noted that David filed for the third time a similar protest before the same RTC when Benguet province Judge Agapito Laoagan Jr. was appointed to Paniqui as assisting judge. Laoagan handled the electoral case and ordered the recount of mayoral votes which showed David allegedly won by some 600 votes after the allegedly double-shaded ballots were declared invalid.
“I immediately went to the Comelec for an injunction and temporary restraiining order. The Comelec issued a 60-day TRO on July 25, 2014,” Rivilla said. Despite the TRO, Laoagan issued a special order signed in Benguet directing Rivilla to vacate his mayoral post and turn it over to David.
Meanwhile, David’s wife Evelyn David, a councilor of Paniqui, filed charges of misconduct and abuse of authority against Rivilla who she accused of using funds to pay the salaries of the local hospital’s staff without the approval of the sangguniang bayan.
Because of the charges, Gov. Vic Yap issued last Oct. 3 an order preventively suspending Rivilla for 60 days. In the meantime, Rivilla has pending petitions before the Comelec, including one citing Laoagan in contempt for ignoring the poll body’s TRO, and another questioning the RTC’s considering David’s electoral protest which the same court had dismissed twice earlier.
