Comelec affirms Lim's victory over Atienza in Manila mayoralty race

Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim can now heave a sigh of relief after the Commission on Elections affirmed his victory in the May 10 elections over former Environment Secretary Lito Atienza. The Comelec dismissed Atienza’s election protest for lack of merit, saying he failed to prove that the results of the automated elections are inaccurate and riddled with errors. “We find that protestant (Atienza) has failed to establish the merit of legitimacy of his election protest from his pinpointed pilot clustered precincts. We find no more need to proceed with the recount of the rest of his protested clustered precincts," the Comelec First Division said in its 19-page decision. Atienza himself was a former Manila mayor. According to the Comelec, the automated results tallied with the results of the manual count done by election officials in the city. In the manual count, Lim registered an aggregate lead of 42,672 votes in all six districts even if the poll body included the ballots that were rejected by the counting machines used in the elections. “The above calculations showed that even if all the protestant’s claims were granted, and all his objections on the protestee (Lim) were accepted, while all of the protestee’s claims were denied and his objections to the protestant’s ballots were rejected, protestee will still be leading protestant," the decision read. In terms of percentage, Lim garnered 66.61 percent of the ballots recounted while Atienza only got 20.73 percent, slightly higher than the 12.66 percent that went to other candidates. Comelec said overall, Lim got 395,910 votes over the 181,094 votes cast for Atienza, making the incumbent mayor’s lead of 214,816 votes over Atienza “mathematically impossible to overcome. Atienza had listed some 200 clustered precincts that would be subjected to recount proceedings. Ten recount committees were formed to conduct recount proceedings on March 29 to May 13, 2011. They then submitted their respective reports with each committee, providing a final statistical data on the recount of ballots on May 18, 2011 Last May, the Comelec concluded the recount and the result showed that Lim truly won the polls by a landslide in all six districts. — KBK, GMA News