ANASTACIO PANGONTAO, PETITIONER, VS. FLORES M. ALUNAN AND THE COURT OF APPEALS, RESPONDENTS.

In the general elections held on November 10, 1959, respondent Flores M.
Alunan and petitioner Anastacio Pangontao were among the candidates for mayor of
the municipality of Talakag, province of Bukidnon, On November 12 of the same
year, the Municipal Board of Canvassers proclaimed Pangontao as mayor elect with
a plurality of 37 votes over Alunan. Not satisfied with the result, the latter
filed the corresponding election protest within the legal period in the Court of
First Instance of said province. After due hearing, said court reaffirmed the
election of Pangontao but with a plurality of 16 votes only, which, upon motion
for reconsideration, was further reduced to 4 votes.

Petitioner Alunan appealed to the Court of Appeals assailing the rulings of
the trial court on a good number of ballots admitted as valid votes for
Pangontao. After hearing the case, the Court of Appeals rendered the appealed
decision declaring Alunan as mayor elect of Talakag by a plurality of 1 vote and
awarding him the costs of suit. The pertinent portions of said decision read as
follows:

“As elsewhere noted, the protestant and the protestee received 789 votes and
560 votes, respectively, in the 10 precincts of Talakag not involved in the
protest; while after the lower court deducted 7 votes from protestant and 35
votes from protestee, the contested precincts gave protestant 312 votes and
protestee 545 votes or a grand total of 1,101 and 1,105, respectively, with 4
votes plurality for protestee.

“In this appeal, protestant-appellant assails 50 votes adjudicated in favor
of protestee, of which 5 votes were voided (Exhibits B-22, B-23, B-24, B-25 and
E-11), deductible from protestee’s votes; whereas none was annulled of the 25
votes challenged by protestee-appellee. The result is shown in the following
tabulation:

		Contested precincts as per decision of CFI	Deducted here	Final Vote	Uncontested precincts	Total
	Pangontao	545	5	540	560	1100
	Alunan	312	5	312	789	1101
			Plurality of Alunan			1

“Wherefore, the judgment appealed from is reversed and protestant Flores M.
Alunan is hereby declared mayor-elect of the municipality of Talakag by a
plurality of one vote over protestee Anastacio Pangontao, with costs against the
latter.”

The present is Pangontao’s appeal by certiorari from the above decision.

In his first assignment of error, he assails the ballot marked Exhibit 2 on
the ground that it is marked, the word “Nubia” written on the first line for
councilors having been so written to identify the ballot and the voter who cast
it. The trial court, after examining the ballot in the light of the evidence of
record, expressly found that “Nubia” appeared to be the name or nickname of a
person, and considered the vote cast as a stray vote, leaving the ballot valid
in all other respects. The Court of Appeals, for its part, considered the case
as a doubtful one and, following the policy of the law of resolving the doubt in
favor of the validity of the ballot, it affirmed the resolution of the trial
court. After considering the ballot and the evidence of record material to the
issue, we find no reason to disturb the ruling of both courts.

The other ballot questioned in the first assignment of error is the one
marked Exhibit 6-1 which petitioner claims is a marked ballot because after the
name “Kiliron” written on the first space for councilors, the voter wrote the
word “Bulag”. We agree with the respondent court that the word “Bulag” was
merely descriptio personae which does not invalidate the ballot (Cruz vs.
Court of Appeals, G. R. No. L-14095, April 10, 1959).

In the Second assignment of error, petitioner claims that the respondent
court erred in not holding that the ballots marked Exhibits 5, 5-a, 5-b, 5-c,
and 5-d are invalid because they are marked by the numbers 12, 23, 18, 11, and
25 written on their reverse side, respectively.

In connection with these alleged marks, the respondent court found that they
do not appear to have been written by the voters themselves “because the numbers
were smoothly and finely made with sharpened pencil points, unlike the writings
on the face of the ballots, thereby indicating a different writer.” To this,
said court added that, “Most probably the numbers were written by some election
officials while counting the bunches of ballots in the box for valid ballots to
determine whether their sum tallied with the number of electors who had voted as
per the permanent list, pursuant to Section 145 of the Revised Election Code.”
We agree entirely with the finding and observations just quoted and, as a result
the questioned ballots are held to be valid votes for respondent Alunan.

In the third assignment of error, petitioner claims that the ballots marked
Exhibits 6-B and 4-B should have been rejected by the Court of Appeals because
they are clearly marked.

The alleged mark appearing on Exhibit 4-B is the fact that respondent Alunan
appears to have been voted not only for mayor but also for senator. We believe
that this circumstance does not invalidate the ballot. The vote cast for Alunan
for senator should be considered merely as a stray vote.

Exhibit 6-B is also claimed to be a marked ballot because the voter, after
voting for Alunan and Alahay for mayor and vice-mayor, respectively, voted for
them again for councilors. For the reason already stated above, we hold this
ballot to have been correctly counted as valid for respondent Alunan because the
votes cast for him and for Alahay for councilors should be considered merely as
stray.

In the fourth assignment of error, petitioner claims that the Court of
Appeals should have admitted as valid votes for him the ballots marked Exhibits
B-22, B-23, R-24, and B-25. The pertinent rulings of the respondent court read
as follows:

“Ballots, Exhibits B-22, B-23, B-24 and B-25. These 4 ballots are marked, as
indicated by the vote for ‘Atty. Aquino’ appearing as the 4th name in the space
for councilors, thereby showing a scheme to thus mark the ballot (as intimated
by witness Acido), said attorney being one of the lawyers, and nephew, of
protestee.”

A careful examination of the questioned ballots confirms the finding that the
last person voted for councilor in all of them is “Atty. Aquino”. Considering
the circumstance that Atty. Aquino was found to be a nephew and one of the
lawyers who appeared for petitioner in the trial court, as well as in the Court
of Appeals and in this Court, we are constrained to agree with the finding that
his name was purposely written on the ballots as a means of identifying them and
the voters who cast them. They were, therefore, correctly rejected and
considered not valid.

In the fifth and last assignment of error, petitioner contends that the Court
of Appeals should have admitted Exhibit E-11 as a valid vote in his favor
instead of invalidating it as marked. The Court of Appeals considered this
ballot as marked because “Carlos P. Garcia” and “Juan Pajo” were voted for as
councilors, and they being national figures and not candidates for said
position, their names constitute identification marks, We find this ruling to be
correct.

The vote cast for Juan Pajo could still be explained and considered as stray
because he was one of the candidates for senator at the time, but certainly the
name of Carlos P. Garcia, the incumbent President of the Republic at the time,
who was not running for any elective position, presents an entirely different
case and must be considered as an identification mark. This is perfectly in
accord with our ruling in Cruz vs. Court of Appeals, G. R. No. L-14095, April
10, 1959, to the following effect:

“Similarly, at the bottom of the list of persons voted for councilors in
Exhibit 17-F-Cruz, were “Lacson” and “Figueras”. Considering that these are
prominent politicians in Manila, who were not running, and could not have
possibly run, for councilors in Calumpit, Bulacan, this ballot should, also, be
regarded as marked, and was erroneously counted for Pineda. (Balajadia vs.
Ensala, supra; Corpus vs. Ibay,
supra.)”

Having arrived at the above conclusions resulting in the finding that the
Court of Appeals did not commit any of the errors assigned in petitioner’s
brief, we find it unnecessary to rule on the counter-assignment of errors made
in the brief submitted by respondent Alunan.

Wherefore, the decision appealed from is affirmed, with costs.

Padilla, Bautista Angelo, Labrador, Concepcion, Reyes, J. B. L., Barrera,
Paredes, Regala, and Makalintal, JJ., concur.