BORACAY ISLAND—Many votes cast for vice mayor in Malay, Aklan were allegedly not read by the vote counting machine during the May 9 elections.
Incumbent Vice Mayor Wilbec Gelito thus filed an election protest against Vice Mayor-elect Abram Sualog.
The vice mayor complained of massive vote buying.
Citing figures from the Municipal Board of Canvassers Gelito claimed 28,268 actually voted.
Sualog garnered 13,072 votes while Gelito got 12,368 votes; Gelito lost to Sualog by a slim margin of 704 votes. The sum of the votes received by the two candidates was 25,440 votes only, short of P2,828 from the actual number of those who validly voted, Gelito said.
The total number of votes cast that the VCM failed to read were about 2,828 votes, Gelito added.
He believed he would have won had the VCMs accurately read the votes.
According to lawyer Manuel Santos, Gelito’s lawyer, “the unaccounted votes are sufficient to alter the election results for the vice mayor.”
In signed affidavits of Rosita S. Combong, Josephine L. Umambong and Analiza Cahilig, they noted that the VCMs indeed failed to read accurately their votes.
“The name of Vice Mayor Gelito whom we voted did not appear in the receipts issued, thus the presumption that our votes were never counted in his favor,” they added.
Gelito is seeking for a manual recount and nullification of Sualog’s proclamation as winning candidate in Malay.
Jeffrey Gallano Cawaling in his signed affidavits stated, he personally witnessed massive vote buying within the vicinity of polling place.
He claimed to have been approached by unidentified man wearing a yellow t-shirt and asked him if I were a registered voter.
“When I answered yes, he handed me a folded sample ballot with a 500 bill,” claimed Cawaling.
If Cawaling were to be believed, the folded sample ballot bore the names of Mayor Yap and Sualog.
Meanwhile, Maria Katrina A. Abalajon, in her signed affidavit stated that on May 16,2016 at around 12:00 noon while she was on her way to vote with 10 other persons , a woman and two men in a table with a banner of Yap and Sualog approached and gave them sample ballots.
The sample ballots bore the names of Yap and Sualog and had 500 bills each.
Abalajon claimed she was told to “vote straight” and specifically for Sualog as vice mayor.
Lawyer Gina Coronel Garcia, one of the petitioner’s legal counsels, went to the Boracay Tourist Assistance Center and complained of alleged massive vote- buying in Barangay Manocmanoc,Boracay Island .
She presented peso bills in various denominations that were inserted in a folded sample ballot allegedly from the camp of her client’s rival.
Gelito’s running-mate for mayor Ceciron Cawaling defeated the incumbent mayor.
