The records of the Commission on Election in Bacolod City are intact, Bacolod Comelec registrar Mavil Majarucon assured the public yesterday.

Majarucon was reacting to the accusations hurled by the recall petitioners against them in the verification and authentication proceedings of the Petition for Recall filed against Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia. The Comelec personnel continued to wear black shirts as a sign of protest against the charges against them of the petitioners.

The petition was filed against Leonardia by a group led by former Mayor Luzviminda Valdez, whom he had defeated in the May 2004 election. The names of the signatories are now being verified by the Comelec.

Majarucon said they welcome any neutral entity who wants to see their records and observe their process and procedures so they will know who is telling the truth. This is because there have been accusations hurled to malign them and mislead the public, she said.

One of the petitioners, Ely de los Santos, claimed that Comelec has deducted thousands of signatures from the total number of recall petitioners they had submitted. He asked that the petitioners be summoned by Comelec if they doubt the authenticity of the signatures. He also claimed that the election assistants refused to reinstate some of the names in their petition even after their watchers had presented their precinct numbers.

MISLEADING

Majarucon said the petitioners are trying to mislead the public since they are claiming that there are petitioners who are registered voters of Bacolod just because they are armed with a copy of the registration forms. She said these forms (in three copies) were distributed by the barangay captains for the people to fill up during the validation and registration of voters.

Majarucon said that if the person filled up the form but did not go to the Comelec to have his or her data captured by their computer, he or she is automatically not considered a registered voter of Bacolod. She said this is because the process of validation had not been completed.

Majarucon said the petitioners want them to accept these persons. She said all their records are intact and they only authenticate signatures if the names are in their watchlist. She said if there are those who do not have any record with them they can have their records validated again with the Comelec.

NOT REGISTERED

Earlier, it had been discovered that several of those who had signed the recall petition were not registered voters of Bacolod City, and several more withdrew their signatures, saying they had been misled into signing because they were told that what they were being asked to sign were requests for projects in their barangay.

The petitioners wore red shirts yesterday claiming that the recall move is alive. They said they are also protesting against the wearing of black shirt by the Comelec personnel.

Leonardia yesterday said the recall petitioners are making the Comelec a scapegoat despite the fact that everything is transparent. He said this is because they already know they have lost. He said he hopes they will be responsible citizens and be more honest.

Leonardia said that, although the recall move is already dead, he still wants the authentication process to continue to its conclusion so the people will see how deceitful the petitioners are in this exercise. He said they filed the 49,000 signatures only to embarrass him and he hopes the recall move will boomerang on them.

NOT PERSONAL ATTACKS

Meanwhile, Majarucon said that it is not correct for the petitioners to say that they at the Comelec should be open to personal attacks since they are career executives and their position is permanent regardless of whoever is in power.

"We are not politicians who have personal motives, but we are doing only what our job calls us to do," she said, adding that to attack them personally is below the belt.*CGS

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