Apparently, the “election fever” is not yet over in Taguig City.

This developed as the City Council castigated Tuesday the camp of Mayor-elect Ma. Laarni “Lani” Cayetano for their alleged ploy to delay the manual recount of ballots as sought by the protest filed by  losing mayoralty candidate Dante Tiñga.

Re-elected Vice Mayor George Elias said the Cayetano camp’s counter move to file election protests against him and their victorious party-mates, despite their “very large” winning margins, is “baseless and totally unrealizable.”

Elias, the running mate of Tiñga, a retired Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice, called the Cayetano protests as mere “delaying tactics” intended to hold off the manual recount in the mayoralty protest.

“They cannot question the results of all the elective posts, given the insurmountable lead of the proclaimed winners over their candidates. We appeal to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to immediately proceed with the manual recount of votes,” Elias said.

Mayor-elect Cayetano, the wife of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, beat Tiñga by a margin of 2,420 votes in the May 10 automated polls. Tiñga is the father of outgoing three-term mayor and elected 2nd district congressman, Freddie Tiñga.

Aurelio Paulo Bartolome, the No. 1-ranked councilor in the 2nd district, slammed what he called the “senseless” protests lodged by the Cayetano-supported candidates.

“The Cayetano election protests are aimed at negating the vote of the Taguigeños, stymieing the people’s desire for us to continue our work, and discrediting their approval of the past nine years as the best years in the history of Taguig governance,” Bartolome said.

With 370 out of the 373 clustered precincts already canvassed, Kilusang Diwa ng Taguig (KDT) candidates swept all the local positions, with the exception of the tightly-contested mayoralty seat.

Last May 24, Tiñga filed an election protest before the Comelec against mayor-elect Cayetano.

As the council went on session Tuesday, thousands of KDT supporters rallied outside the City Hall decrying the Cayetanos’ dilatory tactics of filing a battery of protests against the winning KDT member-candidates.

“All we want is the truth. The recounting of ballots must be expedited to find out who really won as Taguig mayor,” youth leader Dondon Lazarte said.