INQUIRER.net Eleksyon 2007

Pampanga governor’s foe’s ‘right to know’

Central Luzon Desk

Tonette Orejas

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga—Former board member Lilia Pineda said she would not pull strings to rush the recount of votes in Pampanga now that the Supreme Court had given the Commission on Elections (Comelec) the go-signal to proceed with it.

Pineda also said she was neither excited nor worried about the outcome—if she’s going to be sworn in at all as governor or if she really lost the 2007 race to her closest rival, Governor Eddie Panlilio.

Already waiting for two years, Pineda said she was willing to wait longer until the results are out.

“As a candidate, it is my right to know the truth. But I’m not excited about this recount. I will not even worry. All I have to do is respect the due process. I have left everything to my lawyer and God’s will,” she said in a telephone interview on Sunday.

The tally ended with Panlilio getting 219,706 votes; Pineda, 218,559; and Mark Lapid, who sought re-election, 210,875. Only 779,100 or 67.46 percent of 1,128,411 registered voters in Pampanga voted.

Pineda, a known ally of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, filed the recount petition in July 2007.

She said Panlilio and his supporters cheated her by buying, padding and shaving votes, and using fake ballots.

Panlilio countered by filing a case of election fraud against Pineda, saying his lead of over 10,000 during the precinct level count was trimmed in the run-up to the provincial canvassing.

“I didn’t cheat. As a priest, I couldn’t do that or condone it. We didn’t also have the capability to cheat because we campaigned only on donations and on the help of volunteers. We didn’t have sophisticated machinery or wide political alliance as our rivals did,” Panlilio had said in a previous interview.

He fought the recount case up to the Supreme Court where he obtained a status quo order in February 2008. The high court lifted that through an order released on July 16.

Panlilio said the recount was part of a “larger campaign to oust me from public office.” The other was a recall petition that the Comelec did not act on due to lack of time and funds.

Pineda said she was not behind the recall move initiated last year. Her former campaigner, Rosve Henson, is the head of the group that filed the petition.

Comelec Chairman Jose Melo said the poll body can proceed with the recount, using the P4 million that Pineda deposited as a requirement for the process.

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