ShareThisMANILA – The Commission on Elections started Tuesday the recount for the mayoralty race in Manila in the last May 10, 2010 elections with losing candidate former mayor Jose L. Atienza Jr. confident he would emerge victorious.
“Kung hindi pa napalitan yung balota…I cannot discount that. This is a highly contested election pagkatapos dinelay ang bilangan ng 10 months,” Atienza said.
The recount will be done manually and the ballots will be physically reviewed before comparing their results to the election returns produced by the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.
Atienza said his camp found documentary evidence such as the differing dates in the election returns, as well as discrepancies in the election results.
“Yung sa amin, election returns are dated May 10. Sa kanila, April 26, 27, 29 and May 1, 4, 5, and 9. Bakit ganun? Iba-ibang petsa,” he said.
Atienza filed an election protest claiming massive irregularities and errors in canvassing and counting where Alfredo Lim got 395,910 votes against his 181,094 votes.
He sought a recount in the ballot boxes in 1,144 clustered precincts of the 6,653 established precincts.
He was subsequently ordered by Comelec to deposit P10 million for the manual recount.
Atienza’s lawyer, Romulo Macalintal said they would use the findings of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting during the random manual audit.
“They conducted a manual audit after the elections. In that report, almost 99 percent ay walang problema except in the city of Manila and, more specifically, in the votes involving the mayor’s position, where there is a discovered at least two-digit variances. Dun kami nagre-rely,” said Macalintal.