Geromo v. Commission On Elections

MELENCIO-HERRERA, J.:

Sought in this Petition for certiorari with Preliminary Injunction are the annulment of 1) the Decision of respondent Judge, dated 18 December 1980, annulling the proclamation of petitioner, Jose Geromo, as elected Mayor of Molave, Zamboanga del Sur; and 2) the Resolutions of respondent Commission on Elections (COMELEC) of 6 July 1981 affirming said Decision, and of 12 October 1981 denying reconsideration. In the local election held on 30 January 1980, petitioner Jose Geromo, a mayoralty candidate under the banner of the Concerned Citizens Aggrupation (CCA for brevity), garnered 4,993 votes as against 4,886 votes obtained by his opponent, private respondent Paciano Guillen, the candidate of the Kilusan ng Bagong Lipunan (KBL) for the same position. On 31 January 1980, petitioner was proclaimed duly elected Mayor of Molave, with a plurality of 107 votes over private respondent and has assumed office.

On 5 February 1980, private respondent filed an election protest against petitioner with the Court of First Instance of Zamboanga del Sur, Branch V, at Pagadian City, docketed as Election Case No. 62, to which petitioner filed an Answer with Counter-protest. Out of the 45 voting centers of the municipality, private respondent's protest originally involved 41 voting centers, while petitioner's counter-protest involved 20 voting centers. In the course of the proceedings before the Trial Court, however, private respondent limited his protest to 16 Voting centers (Voting Centers 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, 15, 20, 20-A, 28, 34, 35, 38 and 39), and discontinued his protest as to the rest of the voting centers.

For his part, petitioner limited his counter-protest to only 10 voting centers (Voting Centers Nos. 2, 12, 13, 24, 27, 29, 30, 36, 37 and 41) out of the original 20 voting centers. On 18 December 1980, the Trial Court rendered a Decision finding that private respondent Guillen obtained a total of 5,219 votes as against 4,952 votes for petitioner Geromo, or a margin of 267 votes, tabulated briefly thus: "Summary of votes obtained by the parties in the protested and counter protested voting centers: Guillen Geramo Sub-total 3,626 2,482 "Votes obtained by the parties in the unopened ballot boxes as shown in Exhibit 'B', also marked as Exhibit '1' (Certification issued by Election Registrar Naty S. Pabatao): Sub-total 1,593