The Commission on Elections (Comelec) office in Dumaguete City assured on Friday, May 30, the safety of poll documents in its custody amid an electoral protest filed by a mayoral candidate against the winning bet.
Comelec-Dumaguete election officer, lawyer Ian Macaraya, said that they received a letter from the Comelec central office to safeguard the election documents covered by the protest.
Macaraya clarified their role, saying the Comelec central office has jurisdiction over protests filed for city mayor, city vice mayor, and other higher offices.
“The role of the Comelec field office is to just obey all the orders passed on by Comelec-Manila and we just received yesterday an order to safekeep all documents related to the May 12 elections,” he said.
“We will wait for further instructions from the Comelec but until then, we still do not know what will come next, like whether we have to ship out the ballot boxes and other documents for the recount.”
He also noted the different custodial roles of the treasurer’s office and the Comelec in the safekeeping of election paraphernalia.
Macaraya said the City Treasurer’s Office (CTO) is in charge of safekeeping the ballot boxes and official ballots, as well as other documents inside the sealed containers.
On the other hand, the city Comelec office has custody of copies of the election returns, voters’ lists, and other reports, he said.
Macaraya said they are not privy to the nitty gritty details of the election protest filed by Felipe Claudio Remollo against Manuel Sagarbarria as they do not have a copy of the petition.
The Comelec’s Electoral Contests Adjudication Department, in its letter to the CTO and the local Comelec office here, received separately on Thursday, directed the safeguarding of the election documents relative to an election protest filed by Remollo on May 22.
The complainant is the son of incumbent Mayor Felipe Antonio Remollo, who ran and lost to Sagarbarria, the incumbent congressman of the 2nd District of Negros Oriental, by a slight margin.
Records at the Comelec here showed that Sagarbarria garnered 37,740 votes while Remollo got 36,555 votes or a difference of 1,185 votes.
Dumaguete City has 94,558 registered voters for the May 12 polls, with total ballots counted at 79,838 or a turnout of 84.43 percent.
Macaraya said this is the first election protest seeking a recount in the city.*PNA