Congress completes canvass today

MANILA, Philippines - The joint Senate-House canvassing committee is expected to complete today its tally of votes for president and vice president.

Scheduled to be canvassed are the remaining five certificates of canvass (COCs) from Davao City, which has about 580,000 votes; Bacolod City, 206,000; Mountain Province, 75,000; Eastern Samar, 100,000; and Lanao del Sur, 500,000.

Together, they account for 1.45 million votes, or enough to affect the seesaw battle between vice presidential contenders Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay and Sen. Manuel Roxas II.

As of last Thursday evening when the joint committee suspended its canvass, Binay led Roxas by about 644,000 votes.

The remaining votes will not affect the presidential race as Sen. Benigno Aquino III is leading his closest opponent, former President Joseph Estrada, by 5.5 million votes.

Over the weekend, Speaker Prospero Nograles said if the canvassing is completed today, Congress can proclaim the winning presidential and vice presidential candidates tomorrow.

The Roxas camp is expected to press further the canvassing panel today to look into the more than two million null or void votes recorded last week.

The senator’s lawyers said the committee should conduct a random manual audit of the votes even if the procedure takes one more week.

Null votes for vice president are those not counted by the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines due to various reasons like under shading or over shading, over voting, or unshaded spaces.

Roxas’ camp wants the canvassing panel to examine the null votes, saying not doing so would disenfranchise millions of voters. But the panel advised Roxas’ lawyers to just file an election protest with the Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.

The Binay camp also reminded Roxas that it might be the one to benefit if the null votes were counted.

The joint committee has also turned down the plea of the Aquino camp to declare him ahead of the winning vice president.

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

No separate proclamation

Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said null votes from Lanao del Sur, Eastern Samar, Bacolod, Davao and Mountain Province were too numerous to be disregarded.

Zubiri said lawyers of Roxas have filed five written motions not just to consider the null votes but also to open certificates of canvass from Cagayan province, Cavite and Nueva Ecija where Roxas lost to Binay by a big margin.

Zubiri said they would have a caucus on the issues raised by Roxas’ camp but based on his observation the panel would not likely allow a separate proclamation for the winning vice presidential candidate.

“We can’t afford to delay the proclamation,” Zubiri said over radio station dzBB.

“That is why (Enrile) is already getting mad at (persistent questions) on when the actual proclamation will be. But safe to say, Wednesday (the latest),” Zubiri said.

Like Enrile, Zubiri also advised Roxas to take up his concern with PET.

He said he himself was wondering why there were so many null votes in an automated election system and that it might be possible that the PCOS machines had defects or there might be something wrong with the configuration of the compact flash cards.

“The null votes are no longer material in the presidential race because Noynoy (Aquino) got a five million margin over Estrada. So that’s okay. But the vice presidential contest is tight and so null votes are important,” Zubiri said.

Sweet victory

For Aquino, victory is sweeter with his trouncing of his top rival in the race right in the latter’s own backyard.

San Juan, Estrada’s turf where he cut his political teeth, gave Aquino 22,225 votes against its former mayor’s 21,341, or a margin of 884 votes.

However, in the vice presidential race, it was Binay who won in San Juan with 29,311 votes. Roxas received 20,649 votes.

The third placer in the presidential race, Sen. Manuel Villar Jr., won in Las Piñas, his territory, with 83,620 votes, followed by Aquino with 67,404. Estrada was a far third with 26,655.

In Tarlac, Aquino’s home province, Aquino clobbered his opponents. His province mates gave him 387,624 votes. In far second was his province mate and cousin, Gilberto Teodoro Jr., who received 65,139 votes, with Estrada in third with 30,191 votes.

Overall, when the congressional canvass was suspended last Thursday night, Aquino had 14,641,803 against Estrada’s 9,125,823. Villar had 5,384,262.

Aquino won in most of the 111 provinces and chartered cities whose votes had already been tallied. He took large vote-rich areas, including Batangas, Pangasinan, Cebu, Negros Occidental, Quezon, Laguna, Cavite, Bulacan, Camarines Sur, Rizal, Leyte, Bohol, Iloilo, Albay, Negros Oriental, Manila, and Quezon City.

Estrada took small provinces and cities like Abra, Kalinga, Quirino, Compostela Valley, North Cotabato, Zamboanga Sibugay, Apayao, Cagayan de Oro City, Zamboanga City, Aurora, and Cagayan, home province of Enrile.

The only vote-rich areas where the deposed president prevailed over Aquino were Nueva Ecija, Bukidnon, Isabela, and the Davao provinces.

Aside from Las Piñas, Villar won only in Ilocos Sur and Ilocos Norte, and in Biliran.

Aside from Tarlac, Aquino obtained his biggest margins in Cebu, Batangas, Negros Occidental, Pangasinan, Albay, Bohol, Cavite, and Camarines Sur.