Ousted Bulacan gov brings poll protest issue to SC

Bulacan Governor Joselito Mendoza has asked the Supreme Court to stop the Commission on Elections (Comelec) from implementing its resolutions declaring his political rival, Roberto “Obet" Pagdanganan, as the duly-elected governor of the province. In a 189-page petition, Mendoza asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order and status quo ante order to prevent Pagdanganan, a former Agrarian Reform secretary, from assuming office pending the resolution of his petition. Mendoza was questioning the invalidation of more than 20,000 votes he got in 2007 elections. The votes were nullified by the Comelec during the recount made on the basis of the election protest Pagdanganan filed. In its resolution following the recount, the Comelec said Pagdanganan had gathered 342,295 votes compared to Mendoza’s 337,794 and declared him as the real winner in the 2007 polls. Last week, the Comelec voted 3-3-1 granting Pagdanganan’s motion for immediate execution of the resolution and directed the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to implement its decision installing Pagdanganan as Bulacan’s governor. Mendoza, however, accused the Comelec of arbitrarily invalidating 20,096 votes he got without any legal and factual basis. Of this number, almost 9,160 ballots were nullified for having been written by one person “This arbitrary invalidation of what are otherwise valid votes cast in the May 14, 2007 election resulted in the disenfranchisement of 20,096 voters whose votes were unjustifiably nullified by the public respondent in contravention of the well-settled edict that in the appreciation of ballots, the goal is to give effect and not to frustrate the intention of the voter," Mendoza’s petition read. He also said the Comelec resolution should be declared null and void since the desired majority was not obtained in the voting. Mendoza’s petition said that Rule 3, Section 5 of the Comelec Rules of Procedure mandates that when sitting en banc, “the concurrence of a majority of the members of the commission shall be necessary for the pronouncement of a decision, resolution, order or ruling." “In a patent abuse of its discretion manifesting an evasion of a positive duty enjoined by law, herein public respondent pushed through with the issuance of the resolution even without the required majority and without conducting any rehearing as required by its own Rules of Procedure," it read. - KBK, GMANews.TV