Sto. Tomas City mayoralty bets file joint protest vs mayor-elect

Three candidates in Sto. Tomas City, Batangas filed a joint petition seeking a nullification and recount of the 2022 mayoralty race results, which declared Arth Jhun Marasigan the winner of the election.

Armenius Silva, Banjoe Manzanilla, and Timmy Almeda lodged the electoral protest before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Friday citing the alleged anomalies in the May 9 elections which they claimed resulted in “abnormally high voter turnout” and “statistical improbabilities” in the election results.

“As joint protestants, we have caused the preparation and filing of the foregoing joint petition, to annul and set aside the proclamation of protestee Arth Jhun Marasigan as Mayor-elect of the City of Sto. Tomas Batangas, to conduct a revision of ballot for all covered precincts insofar as the votes for the mayoral candidates are concerned and to declare and proclaim the winning candidate on the basis of the said revision of ballots,” the aspirants said in their petition.

Marasigan was proclaimed mayor-elect of the city with 46,566 votes. His running-mate, Cathy Jaurigue-Perez was declared vice-mayor with 50,606.

The aspirants, however, alleged there was an anomaly in the voting results after they all received a “practically identical number of votes” in several clustered precincts with each candidate seemingly having a “consistent” distribution of votes.

“It is already unusual that, despite the fluctuations in the number of total votes in the precincts, there are numerous precincts where the candidates received exactly the same amount of votes,” they said. “Worse, the similarities often happen in consecutive or nearly consecutive precincts. These results of the elections are impossible to happen, unless fraudulent practices occurred before, during, and/ or after the canvassing of the votes.”

They also noted the “consistent” distribution of votes per candidate in almost all precincts.

“Such trend is glaringly suspect, since it happened in a consecutive manner, and accounts for almost all of the clustered precincts. This is highly improbable considering that the trend failed to account that each candidate has his own bailiwick, which could have resulted in a considerable number of votes for a said candidate over the others,” they said.

Sto. Tomas recorded an 86.69 percent voter turnout in the 2022 elections. It has 111,393 registered voters. — DVM, GMA News