CONGRESS has declared former Cebu governor Gwendolyn Garcia as the duly elected representative of Cebu’s 3rd district.
The House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) dismissed for “lack of merit” the electoral protest filed by former Pinamungajan mayor Geraldine Yapha contesting Garcia’s victory in the May 2013 automated elections.
After an initial revision and appreciation of ballots in the protested clustered precincts, Garcia’s margin of victory over Yapha went up from 1,984 votes to 2,275 votes, or an additional 291 votes.
“Since no recovery of votes was established in favor of Yapha, the dismissal of the protest without further proceedings was found to have been in order,” HRET Chairperson and Supreme Court Associate Justice Prebitero Velasco Jr. said.
The protested clustered precincts represented 25 percent of the total number of precincts in the third district.
After losing in the last 2013 elections, Yapha filed an election protest against Garcia.
Yapha claimed that some ballots in the towns of Aloguinsan, Asturias, Balamban, Barili, Pinamungajan, Tuburan, and Toledo City were not counted by the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines.
But Yapha filed an urgent motion to withdraw her election protest and stated that she isn’t conceding her loss in the 2013 elections.
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