THIS Friday, May 8, a recall election will be held in Puerto Princesa with incumbent Mayor Lucilo Bayron and former Mayor Edward Hagedorn contesting the top elective position in the city.
Rodrigo Saucelo appeared as our resource person at last Saturday’s media forum at Annabel’s and asked media to monitor the conduct of this political exercise as the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has altered the rules regarding ballot boxes.
Election rules stipulate that the insides of ballot boxes should be secured with three padlocks. But the Comelec en banc, consisting of only four commissioners at present, said the ballot boxes can be secured with other means than metal padlocks, such as cable ties (used by police as alternative handcuffs). This, Saucelo said, raises the very real possibility that the contents of the ballot boxes in this recall election can be tampered with, or that ballot switching can easily take place.
Apart from this, Saucelo asked why the chief of police of Puerto Princesa was suddenly relieved and replaced with a police official who had been accused of extortion and torture in his previous postings in Manila.
Saucelo used to be the spokesman of Hagedorn, but has now allied himself with Bayron. He, along with Wilfredo Rama and Antonio Lagrada, recently filed complaint for plunder, violation of Section 3(e) of Republic Act (RA) 3019 and malversation through falsification of public documents against Hagedorn and several other former city officials before the Office of the Ombudsman for alleged illegal reimbursement of P65 million from the city’s Treasury fund.
But Hagedorn’s camp insists that the reimbursements were warranted as they were used for loan assistance, miscellaneous expenses of the City Mayor’s Office, advertisement or promotion of the underground river, maintenance and other operating expense, purchase of electric vehicles and other operating costs.
The Bayron camp, meanwhile, has also raised questions about the validity of the recall election itself.
The upcoming recall election was preceded by a recall petition that the Bayron camp claimed was railroaded and riddled with anomalies.
According to Bayron, the city’s election officer terminated the period of verification to ascertain the legitimacy of the signatories to the recall petition filed against him, despite thousands of signatures yet to be examined and verified.
Bayron said out of the 35,731 signatures contained in the petition, only 32,322 had been examined and verified, with a total of 3,409 signatures yet to be validated, but the election officer assigned to this petition abruptly ended the verification process without offering any justification at all.
Bayron insisted that the recall petition contained no less than 14,000 forged signatures and 7,000 multiple entries, as well as the names of dead people. Thus, it should have been promptly thrown out by the city election officer.
The incumbent mayor claims credit for putting Puerto Princesa’s finances back in order after being in the red for many years. He says he has also taken concrete steps to address poverty, and helped poor but deserving students with scholarships and financial assistance.
Apart from this, Bayron also pointed out that, it is not true that, under his watch, the tourist industry has waned. In fact, he said, an all-time high of 740,272 tourists visited Puerto Princesa in 2014 under his administration. In his first seven months in office alone, he said, tourist arrivals surpassed by more than 12,000 the figures posted during the same period under his predecessor.
Water-rate issue still simmers
WE reported last week that Maynilad Water Services Inc. has demanded payment from the government of P3.44 billion in losses from foregone revenues it incurred since the 2013 rate-rebasing period plus another P208 million each month since January.
According to Maynilad executives, the company is amenable to withdrawing a second arbitration complaint with the Singapore-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) as soon as the Manila Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) carries out the rate adjustment as ordered by the ICC in its December 29 ruling, in light of a recent assurance by Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima that the Philippine government would abide by its financial obligation to the water concessionaire, as stipulated in the state’s Letter of Undertaking or sovereign guarantee to its contractor.
But things took an unexpected turn after the ICC handed out a different decision on April 21 favoring MWSS over the other water concessionaire, Manila Water Corp. (MWC) in its rate-adjustment case, and MWSS flouted the ICC anew in fully implementing the decision on the MWC case right away but selectively enforcing the earlier one on Maynilad’s by allowing a partial adjustment way below the one approved by the Singapore-based panel.
Worse, the MWSS now wants to drag the Supreme Court into this legal mess it has created on its own by planning to seek the SC’s opinion on these disparate ICC orders, even if the decisions of the arbitral tribunal are supposed to be final in keeping with global rules on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).
As expected, Maynilad is pursuing its second arbitration case before the ICC seeking compensation of P3.44 billion in losses plus P208 million more for every month since after the Appeal Panel’s December 28 order.
As revealed by CFO Randolph Estrellado to the media, “We will definitely not implement the partial rate adjustment and will continue to pursue our claim on the government undertaking through arbitration in Singapore.”
E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com.