The Commission on Elections First Division has denied the motion of Silay City Mayor Carlo Gamban to set aside its orders for the holding of the recount of votes for the mayoral post in all 311 precincts in the city during the May 2004 elections.

In their two-page order dated March 13, Presiding Commissioner Resurreccion Borra and Commissioner Romeo Brawner affirmed and upheld their twin orders of Feb. 22, 2006 and directed the election officer of Silay City "to proceed with dispatch (in) the collection, inventory, and transportation of the contested ballot boxes to the premises of the Commission (in Manila), if the same has not been done."

Protestant Jose "Oti" Montelibano, who ran against Gamban, told the DAILY STAR yesterday that he is confident that the recount can finally proceed because he has waited too long.

I'm tired of waiting, he said. The COMELEC order said that perusal of the Omnibus motion of Gamban shows that the arguments assailing the timeliness of the election protest are mere rehash of the arguments that he raised in his motion to dismiss the protest, which had already been ruled upon by the First Division in its February 22 order.

There being no new issues raised, the motion must therefore fail, and the election protest must run its proper course, the order said. The February 22 order directed Montelibano to deposit the required amount to defray the cost of revision; both parties to submit their pool of revisors; and the city election officer to make an inventory and bring before the COMELEC the ballot boxes containing the contested ballots.

Montelibano is protesting the election and proclamation of Gamban on grounds of massive vote-padding, misappreciation and misreading of votes, and substitution of voters, among others.

At the time Gamban was proclaimed, the tally of returns showed that he had 18,019 votes and Montelibano, 17,736, and the other candidate, Edwin Velez, had 11,902 votes.

Montelibano's lawyer, George Erwin Garcia, had earlier said that his client will shoulder the cost of transporting the ballot boxes to Manila as new election rules for local positions state that revisions will be held at the COMELEC central office. The COMELEC First Division directed Montelibano to deposit P286,183 to defray expenses for the revision of the protested precincts and other incidental expenses.*NLG

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