Osmeña: Ongoing recount shows small discrepancies

NO CHEATING. That was the main contention of incoming Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, seen here in a press conference at his Guadalupe home. (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA)

INCOMING Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña said an ongoing manual recount of the votes in six contested clustered precincts showed there were little discrepancies in the results.

Osmeña said he received a call from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) stating that there was little discrepancy between the results of the vote-counting machines (VCMs) and the manual vote recount.

He said the standard operating procedure for Comelec requires a manual recount of three clustered precincts from the north district and three clustered precincts from the south district or a total of 24 polling precincts.

Osmeña said the results of the manual vote audit were submitted to Manila.

“They counted each one. They told me, I don’t have the exact results, I got the results but I don’t know that the original official results were almost the same,” he said.

Osmeña said there were one or two ballots that were not properly shaded which the machine didn’t read but manually counted and it was minor.

“In the 24 precincts, I won all of them. In the random manual vote audit then after that they closed it and sent it to Manila. I was unaware that there is such a thing that they sent the results of the six clustered precincts,” he said.

Osmeña said he was surprised when he received a letter from the Comelec informing him that they started the manual vote count audit between him and Rama six days after the May 9 elections.

“Nagsugod na ang recount (The recount started). For me it took two years before the start of the recount,” he said.

Rama filed an election protest against Osmeña at the Comelec Manila office last May 20, claiming there was election fraud.

In his social media account, Osmeña insisted there was “zero” discrepancy in the election results. Osmeña said he wasn’t surprised by the nearly 30,000 winning margin he received over Rama.

“Gipakita sa tawo, bisan iyahang mga silingan dili ganahan sa iyaha kay napildi man siya sa iyahang precinct. Unya moingon siya nga mahimong matikas? (The people showed it, even his neighbors didn’t like him because even in his own precinct he lost. Now he says it can be manipulated?)” Osmeña said in a TV interview.