G.R. No. 172741 March 16, 2007 MAYOR NOEL E. ROSAL, Petitioner, vs. COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS and MICHAEL VICTOR IMPERIAL, Respondents. DECISION CORONA, J.: Petitioner Noel E. Rosal and private respondent Michael Victor C. Imperial were candidates for mayor of Legaspi City in the May 10, 2004 elections. After the counting and canvassing of votes, petitioner was proclaimed as the duly elected mayor of Legaspi City, having received 44,792 votes over private respondent’s 33,747 and thereby winning by a margin of 11,045 votes. On May 24, 2004, private respondent instituted a petition to annul the proclamation, 1 assailing the canvass of election returns in the 520 precincts that had functioned during the election. On July 6, 2004, the case was superseded by an election protest filed by private respondent with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) contesting the results of the election in all 520 precincts on the grounds of miscounting, misreading and misappreciation of votes, substitute voting, disenfranchisement of voters, substitution and padding of votes, and other alleged irregularities. The protest was docketed as EPC No. 2004-61 and raffled to the Second Division of the Comelec. After an initial hearing on private respondent’s protest and petitioner’s answer, the Second Division issued on November 17, 2004 an order directing the collection of the ballot boxes from the contested precincts and their delivery to the Comelec. On December 16, 2004, private respondent filed a manifestation2 apprising the Second Division of the fact that out of the 520 ballot boxes retrieved for delivery to the Comelec, 95 had no plastic seals, 346 had broken plastic seals and only 79 remained intact with whole plastic seals and padlocks. Revision of the contested ballots commenced in mid-January of 2005 3 and concluded on February 2, 2005. The revision report indicated a reduction in petitioner’s vote count from 44,792 votes to 39,752 and an increase in that of private respondent from 22,474 to 39,184 votes. Shortly thereafter, petitioner filed a "motion for technical examination of contested ballots" on the ground that thousands of ballots revised by the revision committees were actually spurious ballots that had been stuffed inside the ballot boxes sometime after the counting of votes but before the revision proceedings. The Second Division denied the motion. After the revision, the case was set for hearing on February 24, 2005. In that hearing, private respondent manifested that he would no longer present testimonial evidence and merely asked for time to pre-mark his documentary evidence. On March 9, 2005, private respondent filed his formal offer of evidence, thereby resting his case and signaling petitioner’s turn to present evidence in his defense. On March 17, 2005, the first hearing set for the presentation of his evidence, petitioner was directed to pre-mark his exhibits and formalize his intention to have his witnesses subpoenaed. Accordingly, petitioner filed on April 11, 2005 a motion for issuance of subpoena duces tecum and ad testificandum to witnesses whose testimonies would allegedly prove that a significant number of the revised ballots were not the same ballots that had been read and counted by the Board of Election Inspectors (BEI) during the election.