Noy proclamation reset to Tuesday

MANILA, Philippines - The winning candidates for president and vice president will be proclaimed on Tuesday, Speaker Prospero Nograles said yesterday.

“We should be able to finish canvassing the remaining five COCs (certificates of canvass) on Monday and proclaim the winners on Tuesday. So there will be a one-day delay in our proclamation timetable,” he said.

The joint Senate-House canvassing committee had aimed to announce the winners on Monday. Their original proclamation deadline was June 15.

As of 9 p.m. on Thursday, when the joint committee suspended its canvass, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III had 14,641,803 votes against former President Joseph Estrada’s 9,125,823, or a margin of 5.5 million votes.

In the vice presidential race, Estrada’s running mate Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay led his closest rival, Sen. Mar Roxas by 644,000 votes. Binay had 14,084,879 against Roxas’ 13,440,127.

Because of Aquino’s huge lead over Estrada, his canvassing lawyers had asked the joint committee to proclaim their client ahead of the vice presidential winner.

However, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Speaker Prospero Nograles, joint presiding officers of the canvass, said Aquino’s proclamation would have to wait for the completion of the canvass on Monday.

Because of the seesaw battle between Binay and Roxas, the committee had to wait for the missing COCs, including that from Lanao del Sur, where special elections were held in some towns on Thursday.

The canvass documents that are still being awaited are those from Bacolod City, which has about 206,000 voters; Davao City, 580,000; Mt. Province, 75,000; Eastern Samar, 100,000; and Lanao del Sur, 500,000.

Together, they account for about 1.45 million votes.

“I know that our people are eagerly awaiting our decision to terminate this canvass. But the total of more than 1.4 million votes still be to be tallied will affect the vice presidential results. Therefore, we have to await the COCs and suspend this canvass until Monday,” Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri told his colleagues before the canvassing committee adjourned Thursday night.

Roxas is apparently pinning his hopes for overtaking Binay on the remaining 1.4 million votes to be tallied next week.

The committee and Binay’s lawyers told the Roxas camp that it is not the job of the canvassing panel to inquire into these other votes and tabulate them, as such task could take months or even years.

They suggested that Roxas file an election protest with the Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal so that these votes could be checked.

The votes are grouped into three: the so-called null or void ballots, which Roxas’ lawyers estimate could reach three million; the votes that the local canvassing boards did not count because of the lower proclamation threshold for local candidates; and the final testing and sealing (FTS) votes.

The void ballots are those that the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines did not count for any vice presidential candidate due to over voting – the voter chose more than one candidate – or over shading or under shading of the oval spaces for vice president.

If none of the spaces corresponding to the names of the vice presidential candidates is shaded, the vote is also considered void.

In an election protest, all these ballots will be examined one by one. Under shaded or over shaded votes will be credited to the corresponding candidates.

This is where Roxas is anchoring his hopes for eventually beating Binay in an election protest, since his lawyers noted during the canvassing process that most of the null votes were recorded in Roxas’ bailiwicks, though there were also null votes in areas where Binay defeated his closest opponent.

The two other groups of votes won’t affect the vice presidential results, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

These are the PCOS test results that the boards of election inspectors erroneously transmitted to the canvass servers, and the votes that the provincial and city canvassing boards did not count when the Comelec allowed them to proclaim local winners even if their tallies were not yet complete because the uncounted votes would not affect the election’s outcome.

The Comelec reported to the joint Senate-House committee that these two categories of votes reached 370,000 nationwide, a number that would not alter the presidential and vice presidential results.

No delay

Meanwhile, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said the “forensic examination” of the 60 suspicious PCOS machines found in Antipolo City would not delay the declaration of the next president and vice-president by next week.

“If there is any problem about claim of fraudulent voting or so forth and so on or falsification of document, that will all be taken up in the protest,” the Senate president said.

“The controversial PCOS machines – that is not within the jurisdiction of the canvassing body or of the Senate. That is within the jurisdiction of the Comelec who entered into a contract with Smartmatic. So they have to thresh that out,” Enrile added.

“As far as the Comelec is concerned, our position is that we want this forensic examination to be concluded as soon as possible without rushing it. We don’t want unnecessary delays,” Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said.

Heider Garcia, project manager of Smartmatic, said the firm would only be assisting in the examination.

“There was a statement about improper handling of the machines but that was done before we even started. To me it was just a conclusion made before we even started to look at it, we are not even going to comment about it,” Garcia said.

“We did not find any signs of tampering in the machines, there were some that had the box tampered with, but the physical equipment itself, we did not find any damage or any thing that might indicate that it was tampered with. But again, the important thing is the analysis,” Garcia said.

PPCRV warning

Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) chair Henrietta de Villa warned that opening more than three million null votes would delay not only the proclamation of the vice president.

“It would not only be the vice president that would be affected. It would affect everything,” De Villa said in an interview with the Church-run Radio Veritas.

“I just hope Congress understands that its task is to hold a national canvass – to proclaim the president and the vice president,” she said.

Addressing protesting candidates, she said the session hall “is not the place to air all your grievances.”

“There is a proper forum for those cases so they would not have to delay the proceedings,” De Villa said.

Meanwhile, she said she had received reports that election officers were preventing PPCRV volunteers from monitoring the progress of the special elections in some municipalities in Lanao del Sur.

“There was also a commotion in Basilan because a mayor was ordering our poll watchers to leave because he wanted only those he knew (to) stand as poll watchers,” De Villa said. With Christina Mendez, Evelyn Macairan