Probers: Who threw out election documents?

MANILA, Philippines -  Police yesterday failed to trace the political party behind the election documents found by trash collectors Wednesday on a heap of garbage in Mandaluyong City.

The policemen retrieved some 60 small envelopes containing election returns, a voter’s identification card (ID), poll watchers’ IDs for the Liberal Party (LP) and other election paraphernalia, according to Eastern Police District director Chief Superintendent Romulo Sapitula.

Rommel David and Chelsea Cabrera, representatives of the Commission on Elections in Mandaluyong City, said it was next to impossible to know the political party of the recovered documents because they were unsigned, but they claimed that the identification cards of the poll watchers belong to the LP.

“The poll officials claimed that a political party may have thrown the documents at a garbage heap,” Sapitula said in an interview.

He directed Mandalu-yong city police chief Senior Superintendent Joaquin Alva to keep the recovered election documents in a vault for future reference.

Garbage collectors Ronaldo Regodo, and Richard Luana claimed they found the poll documents in a pile of garbage at the Lourdes School on St. Francis street in Barangay Wack-Wack.