CRISPIN Diego “Ping” Remulla won Saturday’s special election for Cavite’s seventh congressional district.
Remulla, who ran under the National Unity Party, can assume starting on Monday the position vacated by his father, Jesus Crispin Remulla, who was appointed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as Justice secretary.
The younger Remulla, who was elected provincial board member last year, was proclaimed as the winner in the special election after getting 98,474 votes, or 66.67 percent of the total number of voters, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
His closest rival, independent candidate Jun Sagun, got 46,530 votes. The other bets, Lito Aguinaldo and Mike Santos received 1,610 and 1,068 votes, respectively.
The board of canvassers headed by Cavite provincial election supervisor Mitzele Veron Morales-Castro and Provincial Prosecutor Vivian Rojo proclaimed Remulla.
“Right after the winner is given the certificate of proclamation by the board of canvassers, he can already be sworn in by anyone authorized to administer the oath. By Monday, he can assume the position of Cavite 7th district representative,” said Comelec Chairman George Garcia who witnessed Remulla’s proclamation along with four other poll commissioners.
Garcia said the number of voters who cast ballots in the special election was much lower than what they expected. Only 149,581 of the district’s 355,184 registered voters, or 42 percent, voted.
“In our experience with special elections and plebiscite, we don’t know why our countrymen do not give them much attention. The provincial election supervisor and all election officers from municipalities and cities in the Cavite districts conducted a massive information dissemination and education campaign,” Garcia said.
He said it was “regrettable” for the government to spend so much on a special election only to have a low voter turnout.
“I hope in elections like this, our countrymen will realize that the Comelec spent government funds and that they have a corresponding duty to fulfill by voting,” Garcia said.
The turnout may not be high “but it’s the sentiment of the people here in the seventh district of Cavite,” he said.
Aside from “minor technical glitches” involving aging vote-counting machines, the special election “has been very peaceful,” said Garcia.
There were some machines that had to be tilted before they could accept ballots, he said.
The National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) reported that most polling places opened on time.
Namfrel observers, however, also reported ballot paper jams early on in the voting.
The observers also noted that some voting counting machines (VCM) malfunctioned or shut down, and the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) were not printing clearly.
In Alulod Elementary School in Indang, voters were requested to leave their filled-out ballots after the VCM shutdown and a replacement SD card was acquired.
In a polling center in Trece Martires Elementary School, voters had to wait for the VCM to be replaced because the VVPAT coming out of the original VCM was unreadable, said Namfrel, the Comelec-accredited citizens’ arm for the Cavite special election.
The group also reported that 83 percent of reports it received as of Sunday indicated that Covid-related protocols were not consistently enforced, including the wearing of face masks, physical distancing, and disinfection of hands and materials. MANILATIMES.NET
