Former Environment Secretary Jose “Lito” Atienza yesterday filed an election protest before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and urged the poll body to conduct a recount and nullify the proclamation of incumbent Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim.

Atienza, who was accompanied by his lawyer Romulo Macalintal, and his running mate, outgoing Manila councilor Bonjay Isip-Garcia, personally went to the Comelec head office at Intramuros Manila at around 10:00 a.m., Monday.

Some 500 supporters of Atienza held demonstrations outside the Palacio del Governador to show their support for their candidate.

In a 13-page protest filed before the Comelec, Atienza prayed that the election results be rechecked since the “protested precincts are not reflective of the actual votes.”

The protest, through Macalintal, cited that they have evidence of fabricated results as early as April 26 to 28 prior to the election proper last May 10.

“The failure of the machines to correctly count the votes can be cured through manual counting. We believed that the only remedy with this failure to correctly count the votes is through manual counting,” he told the Manila Bulletin in an interview.

He added that once they have established solid evidence with the irregularities, they would be filing appropriate charges with the Smartmatic-TIM.