The House of Representative Electoral Tribunal said that the counting of questioned ballots in the first congressional district of Negros Oriental showed plenty of blanks in the space for congressman, resulting in the massive disenfranchisement of voters.

The recount stemmed from the election protest filed by Jerome Paras, who lost to incumbent Rep. Emmanuel Iway in the May 2013 polls. He said he filed the protest due to what he believes to be “massive fraud, cheating and other irregularities, resulting in the unexplained, mysterious and unbelievably high votes for congressman missing in the 2013 elections”.

Paras said his doubts and suspicion were confirmed by the results that showed 12,910 ballots with “no votes” and 1,476 ballots with “over votes” for the contested position.

The contested results where the blank ballots were found, represented 30 percent of the total votes in the first district, especially in Ayungon, Payabon in Bindoy, Manjuyod, Tayasan and Vallehermoso, that Paras said, were his bailiwicks, and where he expected to win by high majority against Iway.

Records show that there were 191,000 who voted in the 2013 polls in the first district, yet only 138,000 votes were tallied for the congressional candidates, leaving 53,000unaccounted votes.

Paras said such findings confirm that his claim that the election for congressman in the first district was marred by massive irregularities and manipulations is correct.

He did not say, however, how this was done, when the election was conducted through the Precinct Count Optical Scanner, or PCOS, machines.

Paras said this is the first time in the history of the first district that this has happened, not even in Mindanao where all kinds of cheating is reported.

He said his counsel, George Garcia, is batting for the invalidation of the election result, and he wants a special election to be conducted.*JG

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