EDITORIAL - The long wait

It seemed too good to be true. There was public rejoicing as reports came out that the opposition had accepted congressional canvassing rules for president and vice president. Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. announced the composition of the expanded 11-member panel from the House of Representatives. The long awaited canvassing is supposed to finally start today. Yesterday, however, the opposition denied agreeing to the rules and gave strong indications that it intended to make the canvassing as long drawn out as possible.

The opposition made it clear that it wanted to scrutinize each of the 176 provincial certificates of canvass. Certain COCs will be cross-checked against election returns – there are 215,953 from clustered precincts. Mike Romero, spokesman for the opposition Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino, also said the KNP would question the constitutionality of leaving the canvassing to a joint committee of the Senate and the House, even if the panel is expanded. It’s going to be another long week.

Congress has already spent four days debating endlessly about the canvassing rules. Instead of civilized consensus we got comedy – a test of which congressman could shout "shut up" louder and throw a more dramatic temper tantrum. Then everyone took a weekend break. Four days can hardly be called a long time, but it’s an eternity when added to the two-week wait since election day. Today marks three weeks since the elections. Yet the nation is no closer to finding out the official results of the voting for president and vice president.

This electoral exercise has already provided enough lessons on how not to conduct free elections. From the registration of voters to the campaign, from election day to the manual counting of votes, there has never been a lack of causes for national embarrassment. The congressional canvassing promises to provide more.