THE Commission on Elections (Comelec), sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), will proclaim today the 12 winning senators in the recently held May 9 elections, with no less than President Duterte and other top ranking government officials invited to attend.
The proclamation ceremonies will be held at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) Forum Tent in Pasay City at 4 p.m.
“At the moment, we have prepared the advisory for the senators and the invitations are also in process as well as the program,” Comelec – Education and Information Department (EID) Deputy Director Frances Arabe said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
Elections Commissioner George Garcia said that aside from President Duterte, also invited to the event are Vice President Leni Robredo, Senate President Vicente Sotto III, Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo and House Speaker Lord Allan Velasco.
Garcia said this is the first time that the Comelec is inviting top ranking government officials to attend the proclamation ceremonies.
He said the invitations to the special guests were sent yesterday.
Set to take their oaths as the country’s new senators are Robin Padilla (26,612,434), Loren Legarda (24,264,969), Raffy Tulfo (23,396,954), Sherwin Gatchalian (20,602,655), Francis Escudero (20,271,458), Mark Villar (19,475,592), Alan Peter Cayetano (19,295,314), Juan Miguel Zubiri (18,734,336), Joel Villanueva (18,486,034), JV Ejercito (15,841,858), Risa Hontiveros (15,420,807), and Jinggoy Estrada (15,108,625).
Their votes exclude those from Lanao del Sur, which has yet to transmit its Certificate of Canvass (COC) due to the scheduled special elections on May 24 in several clustered precincts there.
Garcia said each senatorial candidate will be allowed to tag along five companions.
“The winning senatorial candidates and their companions and other guests are not required to show any (COVID-19) test results. What is important is they have vaccine cards,” said Garcia.
The winning senators are expected to wear traditional Filipino clothing when they walk into the proclamation ceremonies.
Yesterday afternoon, the Comelec already conducted a dry run of the preparations for today’s proclamation.
The Comelec said there will be no proclamation – partial or full – of winning party-list organizations on Thursday because the remaining votes from Lanao del Sur must still be included in the tally before a proclamation is made.
“The aforesaid untransmitted results will greatly affect the determination of the winning party-list groups and the number of seats to which each is entitled,” said the NBOC Supervisory Committee in open session.
The NBOC said the proclamation will come after the votes from Lanao del Sur have been canvassed following the conduct of the special polls.
Based on the latest National Tally Sheet, six party-list organizations are currently inside the winner’s circle in the electoral race, led by the ACT-CIS with 2,103,127 votes or 5.79 percent of the total votes.
Other groups that have so far met the two percent threshold are 1 Rider Party-list (999,655); Tingog (884,709); 4PS (834,367); Ako Bicol (815,892); and Sagip (774,103).
In a related development, the Comelec said all party-lists that will come in second place or lower in the last May 9 polls will have no chance of getting three seats in the House of Representatives.
“There would only be one party-list organization that is entitled to three seats, and that is the first in rank party-list organization,” Garcia said.
“Whoever would get the no. 1 in seat/rank will have automatic three seats. Whether they will get 8 percent, 10 percent, whatever they will get a maximum of 3 seats,” he added.
“If one party-list receives 7.5 percent of votes but is at no. 2, then that party-list will only get two seats,” he also said.
VP PROCLAMATION
The Comelec also gave the go-ahead to the oath-taking of leading vice presidential candidate Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio on June 19 in her home province.
Garcia said the poll body does not find anything wrong if Duterte-Carpio takes her oath 11 days ahead of the start of her term on June 30.
“It can be done earlier. This is as long as they assume office at 12:01 pm on June 30 and the content of the oath is similar to the one in the Constitution. That’s what is provided for by the Constitution,” said Garcia.
“It is not indicated in the law that the actual oath should happen at exactly 12 noon of June 30,” he added.
Garcia also said it has already happened in the past that local officials have taken their oath ahead of their assumption into office.
“If I remember correctly, there were two former presidents, who took their oath at 11:45 am, not 12 noon. Is that a violation of the Constitution? Nobody questioned,” he said.
Similarly, he said there is also no prohibition for winning candidates to take their oaths more than once.
“For some, for them to have reasons to hold a party, a banquet, a thanksgiving, they take their oath even before a barangay captain. It may be possible that you have taken oath now and have another one later. There is no prohibition to have several oaths,” said Garcia.
The camp of Duterte-Carpio has announced that she is eyeing to have her oath taking as vice president on June 19 in Davao City so she can also attend the inauguration of her tandem and leading presidential bet Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
CANVASSING
A total of 141 ballot boxes containing the COCs for the presidential and vice-presidential races have been received by the Senate as of 7 a.m. Tuesday.
The Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau said the ballot boxes already received represent 81.50 percent of the 173 total number of ballot boxes the upper chamber is expected to receive which will be transferred to the House of Representatives for canvassing.
The latest to be transmitted to the Senate were COCs and Election Returns (ERs) from Tawi-Tawi, Leyte, Davao City, Zamboanga del Sur, 63 barangays of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), Siquijor, Bohol and Manila.
COCs from the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (Agana), Kuwait, Japan and Oman were also delivered to the Senate.
The Senate will transfer the COCs and ERs to the House of Representatives before May 24 where both houses of Congress will convene in a joint session to canvass the votes for the 2022 presidential and vice presidential elections.
Meanwhile, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) said it has received as of 5 p.m. Tuesday 78,220 ERs or 72.57 percent of the 107,785.
Of these ERs, 45,892 came from North and South Luzon; 14,993 from the Visayas; 10,040 from the National Capital Region, and 7,295 from Mindanao.
It said that as of May 16, it has encoded 54,412 ERs, of which 53,644 “matched against the transmitted results.”
The difference according to the PPCRV is due to 14 ERs not yet compared with transmitted results, 317 no transmitted ERs and 437 for revalidation.
The poll watchdog said it has yet to receive ERs from the overseas absentee voting.
PPCRV
In a press briefing Monday, PPCRV spokesperson and legal counsel Vann Dela Cruz said the match rate between audited physical copies of ERs as against the electronically transmitted results is at 98.57 percent, with a mismatch rate of only 1.43 percent.
The high match rate means that Marcos Jr. and Duterte-Carpio will maintain their lead over their opponents in the audit being conducted by the PPCRV.
Asked if the 1.43 percent mismatch should be a cause for concern, Dela Cruz said the audit is not yet done.
Dela Cruz said they will continue doing the encoding and matching until May 20.
“We will encode and match as much as possible and as long as we are here,” he said.
The PPCRV earlier set May 20 as the date when it will wind down its operations in its command center. — With Ashzel Hachero and Raymond Africa
