MANILA – The Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) Second Division has dismissed the electoral protest filed by losing mayoral candidate Arnel Cerafica against Taguig Mayor Lino Cayetano.
In the 2019 mid-term elections, Cayetano won the mayoral race, garnering 172,710 votes against Cerafica’s 109,313.
Despite Cayetano’s huge margin of 63,357 votes, Cerafica lost no time in submitting an election protest.
In a 250-page Order released on January 31, the Second Division found no evidence of the alleged irregularities such as malfunctioning vote counting machines or VCMs, vote buying, ballot shading by poll watchers, and distribution of sample ballots.
After the manual review, the contested ballots showed a clear preference of the voters for Cayetano. Out of the counted 93 pilot protested precincts, Cayetano tallied 33,557 votes while Cerafica got 25,463 votes.
Comelec rules mandate that an electoral protestant must obtain substantial recovery in the pilot contested precincts for the protest to continue with the review of the ballots in the remaining 374 protested precincts.
The substantial recovery rule requires a protestant to produce a marginal increase equivalent to 20 percent of the total winning margin. Inasmuch as Cayetano's lead was 63,357 votes, Cerafica needed an additional 12,680 recovery votes for his protest to continue with the revision of ballots in the rest of the contested precincts.
In the tabulated and detailed visual examination of the ballots done by the Revision Committees, the results showed negligible difference in the votes counted in the 93 precincts.
Cerafica was credited with 82 additional votes but debited with 11 votes as his votes barely jumped from 25,463 to 25,534 or a net gain of 71.
On the other hand, Cayetano was also credited with 70 additional votes and deducted with 15 votes, increasing his votes from 33,557 to 33,612 or a net gain of 55.
Cerafica's recovery votes thus stood at only 16, way below the required 12,680 votes.
With the clear confirmation of the unassailable margin of Cayetano, the Comelec had no choice but to abbreviate the protest by dismissing the same.
In the upcoming May 9 national and local elections, Cerafica is running again for mayor of Taguig against congresswoman Lani Cayetano, the city’s former mayor from 2010 to 2019. (PR)
