G.R. No.

113107 July 20, 1994

WILMAR P. LUCERO, petitioner,

vs.
COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS and JOSE L. ONG, JR., respondents

Facts: Lucero lost to Ong by 204 votes in the 1992 elections for theposition of district
representative of the 2nd legislative district of Northern Samar The tally, however, did
not include the results of the following:

Precinct No. 7 —Illegible "

Precinct No. 13 —Snatched ballots; no election held
"Precinct No. 16 —Missing election returns "

In light of this failure, Lucero moved for the COMELEC to suspend the proclamation of
Ong and to hold a special election for Precinct No. 13 Acting on Lucero’s urgent
manifestation, COMELEC directed PBC to desist from reconvening until further orders
"Ong moved to lift the suspension in which Lucero opposed COMELEC en banc issued
a resolution ordering the Provincial Election Supervision (PES) of Northern Samar to
bring the ballot boxes from Precinct 7 and 16 to the Commission wherein the keys
thereof shall be turned over to the PES who shall in turn give the keys for each
ballot boxes to the duly authorized representatives of Lucero and Ong

The Court issued a TRO against the implementation of the above-mentioned resolution
and eventually ordered the COMELEC to cease and desist from implementing the same

Acting on motions for reconsideration and clarification respectively filed by COMELEC

and Lucero, the Court modified its decision and instead ordered to re-raffle the case to
COMELEC

In 1994, COMELEC en banc issued the assailed resolutionordering a re-tabulation of

the votes including the results ofPrecinct 16 and the ‘COMELEC-copy’ of the results for
Precinct 7,a special election for Precinct 13, and a recount of Precinct 7conditioned
upon the results of Precinct 13
"
Both Lucero and Ong contested the said resolution Lucero — the count of ballots in
Precinct 7 must be unconditional because the election returns therefrom are invalid
"
Ong — COMELEC has no authority to order the correction and to call for a special
election almost two (2) years after the regularelection
"
Hence, this petition

Issue/s:W/N a special election could be held 1 year and 10 months afterthe

regular election

Held: Yes. There are two requisites for the holding of special elections under
Section 6 of the Omnibus Election Code, viz., (1) that there is a failure of
election, and (2) that such failure would affect the results of the election. The
parties admit that the failure of the election in Precinct No. 13 was due to ballot-
box snatching and do not dispute the finding of the COMELEC as to the
necessity and inevitability of the holding of a special election in said precinct,
even if the result of Precinct No. 7 should be based on the questionable
"Comelec Copy" of its election returns. In the case at bar, the two requisites have
been meet.
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