Mayor Evelio Leonardia said on Sunday, September 19, that he is alarmed over the unusual influx of transferee-registrants from out-of-town areas at the Bacolod Commission on Elections office, and called on lawyer Ma. Fatima Aspan to inhibit herself from assuming as acting city poll officer to preserve the integrity of the ongoing voter registration process.
Aspan said she received the letter of Leonardia calling for her inhibition on Saturday and forwarded it to the Comelec regional director.
“I am just doing my job as ordered by the Commission on Elections,” she said.
The allegations hurled against her are all rumors and hearsay, she said.
Aspan, who is Negros Occidental provincial election supervisor, was designated as acting Bacolod election officer starting September 14 by Comelec Regional Director Wilfredo Jay Balisado, after a staff of the city Comelec office tested positive for COVID-19.
However, incumbent Bacolod election officer Kathrina Trinio Caña tested negative for COVID-19 on September 15, Leonardia said.
Leonardia, in his September 17 letter to Aspan, called her attention to the fact that her designation was temporary and good only until incumbent election officer Caña has a negative RT-PCR test result.
“There is a very strong general impression that your presence at Bacolod Comelec until now, with the questionable massive influx there of transferee-registrants from out-of-town areas, especially from those previously served by Mr. (Alfredo Abelardo Bantug) Benitez as congressman, puts your integrity seriously in question,” Leonardia alleged.
Benitez is running for mayor of Bacolod against Leonardia in the May 2022 polls.
Caña said on Friday that she and 10 other Comelec Bacolod employees tested negative for COVID-19.
They have been given clearance through a Comelec medical online consultation to return to work on September 27 yet, she added.
They were told to complete their 14-day quarantine from last exposure to a COVID-19 positive co-worker on September 11, Caña said.
Observers witnessed throngs of supposed out-of-town voter registrants, with their children in tow, since Tuesday, September 14, with many of them bringing rice cookers, mats, mattresses, rice, canned goods and cans of biscuits, the press release from the Bacolod City Public Information Office said.
On Wednesday, Station 1 operatives said the long line snaked through from the Bacolod Comelec area down to SM City at the Reclamation Area as early as 4 a.m., it added.
The line probably breached the 300-meter distance or more, police said.
The following day, Thursday, a long line, beyond the 300-meter mark, was seen from the Comelec all the way past the plaza bandstand up to Gatuslao Street near Jollibee, the press release quoted the PNP as saying.
A deaf-mute transferee from Bago City fainted due to the heat. He later told the Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office rescue unit that he did not have breakfast but tried to have his voter registration transferred because he was offered P1,000, the press release added.
Other voter-transferees came all the way from an hacienda in Isabela town and rural barangay in Talisay City, Silay City and as far as Victorias City, it said.
It is a well-known fact, that Aspan had served as election officer of Victorias City, in the third district of Negros Occidental where Benitez was congressman for three terms before transferring his voter’s registration in Bacolod City, Leonardia said.
Without necessarily casting aspersions, Leonardia said there are strong doubts of Aspan’s impartiality since she used to be an election office in the third district.
Leonardia also cited Aspan’s presence at the Comelec Bacolod office on July 19 when the local poll body held its exclusion hearing over the issue of the residency/domicile of Benitez.
Many witnesses had seen Aspan inside the Comelec Bacolod office, and are willing to attest to this fact, he said.
Her presence with Benitez at the Bacolod Comelec office cannot just be a coincidence but an “act inappropriate, unbecoming and highly suspicious of a PES, and which could even be construed as intended to press undue influence over the outcome of the ERB decision, which came out to be favorable to Mr. Benitez,” Leonardia said.
Leonardia also said when Aspan temporarily assumed as Bacolod election officer she “exercised a very confusing policy, which miserably affected crowd management and wrought havoc upon social distancing protocols against Covid-19.”
The standing policy for crowd control is to limit the daily capacity for registrants to only 300 persons and 50 more for online applicants but last September 16, Aspan insisted to also entertain 200 more online applications despite the massive crowding outside Bacolod Comelec, the press release said.
“This shows that you processed as many as 500 applicants that day, which obviously disregarded the health and safety protocols against the COVID-19 pandemic, Leonardia said.
Leonardia reminded Aspan that recently, a spike in COVID-19 cases has been recorded, especially that the Delta variant is apparently affecting Bacolodnons.
“With this development, you should have, by your initiative, ordered the temporary stoppage of voters’ registration or, at the very least, controlled the number per day to what is allowed under the present health protocols,” Leonardia said.
He also lamented that Aspan did not bother to consult the Bacolod Inter-Agency Task Force/Bacolod Emergency Operations Center Task Force about this ordinary course of action for the safety of the general public.*
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