Court orders officials to answer fraud charges

Press, 20 May 1987, Page 10

Court orders officials to answer fraud charges

NZPA-Reuter Manila The Philippines’ Supreme Court yesterday ordered election officials to answer fraud charges and an independent. poll organisation challenged Opposition candidates to prove it doctored results of the May 11 election. . The Court issued the order after a three-hour closed-door session where it discussed an Opposition petition asking it to stop the counting of votes and annul the results. • As the High Court stepped into the bitter election dispute, the Opposition leader and former Defence Secretary, Juan Ponce Enrile, moved to within a few thousand votes of winning one of the 24 Senate seats. Mr Enrile, fighting for political survival, was run-

ning twenty-fifth with 6,366,711 votes — 33,877 votes shy of the twentyfourth slot, now held by a Government candidate, Mamintal Tamano, who had 6,400,588 votes. The tally was based on more than 70 per cent of votes counted by the independent National Movement for Free Election (Namfrel), which has President Corazon Aquino’s coalition winning all but one of the Senate seats. The group wound up its unofficial count on Monday. The Supreme Court directed the official Commission on Elections (Comelec) to answer within a week the charges of massive cheating hurled by Mr Enrile’s Grand Alliance for Democracy Party., Namfrel, accused by G.A.D. of allegedly tamp-

ering with results to favour Mrs Aquino’s candidates, said it "stands squarely behind” its count. The group, which fielded 300,000 volunteers throughout the country to monitor the May 11 elections, said field reports indicated “irregularities” were committed by both parties in some areas but they did not affect overall results. It said it was ready to submit its count to audit by any professional group and called on all political parties questioning its count “to submit to a comparative analysis with Namfrel on a precinct-for-precinct basis” of votes counted.