Congress finalizes canvass rules

MANILA, Philippines - The two houses of Congress have finalized the draft rules they will follow in canvassing the votes for president and vice president starting on Tuesday.

Speaker Prospero Nograles said yesterday the Senate and the House of Representatives would vote on the draft rules in a joint session on Monday.

He said they hope to finish the canvass and proclaim the winning president and vice president not later than June 4, when the 14th Congress is scheduled to adjourn its third and last regular session.

Under the proposed rules, the votes contained in the certificates of canvass (COCs) sent to the Senate president by the provincial and city board of canvassers (BOC) will be tallied in a joint Senate-House public session.

Each chamber will require a quorum before the session can begin. Any member can question the quorum.

The two houses will create a joint canvassing committee composed of nine senators and nine House members, including the joint chairs. A lawmaker who was a candidate for president and vice president in the May 10 elections is not qualified to sit in the canvassing panel.

This means presidential frontrunner Sen. Benigno Aquino III as well as Senators Manuel Villar, Richard Gordon and Loren Legarda are banned from membership in the committee.

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, son of former President Joseph

Estrada, who is trailing Aquino in the unofficial count by more than five million votes, has expressed his intention to inhibit himself from the congressional canvass.

The proposed rules designate Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Nograles as joint chairs. Enrile is an ally of deposed President Estrada. He won a new term under the latter’s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino.

Enrile’s and Nograles’ direct participation in the daily canvassing is a departure from tradition. In the congressional tabulation in 2004, then Senate President Franklin Drilon and Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. entrusted the canvass to a joint committee co-chaired by Sen. Francis Pangilinan and then Iloilo City Rep. Raul Gonzalez.

The 2004 tally showed President Arroyo defeating the late popular actor Fernando Poe Jr. by about one million votes. Poe’s allies claimed Mrs. Arroyo cheated their candidate. The President denies the accusation.

On Tuesday, shortly after the start of the joint public session, Enrile and Nograles would open all COCs and their accompanying statements of votes in the order that Enrile’s office received them.

Each candidate for president and vice president would be allowed to have two watchers and two lawyers.

The joint canvass committee would decide any question involving any COC by a majority vote of its members, with the Senate and House teams voting separately. In case of disagreement, the decision of Enrile and Nograles would prevail.

The panel may enlist the assistance of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and its local canvassing boards.

The joint chairmen would have the power to punish for contempt BOC members who refuse to obey their order for the delivery of canvass documents or for assistance, and lawyers and watchers for disorderly conduct.

Joint committee members and candidates’ lawyers would enter into the record of proceedings their observations about the canvass documents. The committee would compare the COCs opened in the joint session with the electronically transmitted COCs from a computer installed at the House session hall, where the joint session would be held.

The committee would tally certificates in which it finds no signs of irregularity and which are not contested. In case of contested COCs, Enrile and Nograles may defer their inclusion in the canvass.

After all uncontested certificates are canvassed, the canvassing panel would verify and compare the disputed COCs with other copies of such certificates, such as those in the possession of the Comelec and political parties.

It may even “order the opening of a predetermined number of precinct ballot boxes of that particular city, district or province (where the results are contested).”

This is something that the Pangilinan-Gonzalez tabulation panel obstinately refused to do in 2004 despite repeated pleas from Poe’s defenders and lawyers, who wanted the committee to open certain ballot boxes containing the precinct-level election returns to prove there was cheating.

Opening the ballot boxes and appreciating the ballots and counting the votes manually, as the draft rules would allow, could delay the canvass and the proclamation of Aquino, who apparently won the presidency.

After the tabulation is finished, the Enrile-Nograles canvass committee would prepare its report for submission to the joint Senate-House session, which would then proclaim the winners.

Objectivity

Senate President Enrile has announced that he will choose members of the Senate who had no “relationships” with the presidential and vice presidential contenders to maintain the objectivity of the process.

He named a few, including Senators Gregorio Honasan, Kiko Pangilinan, Chiz Escudero, Joker Arroyo, Lito Lapid, Alan Cayetano and his sister Pia, Edgardo Angara and Miriam Defensor-Santiago.

Senators Villar, Jamby Madrigal and Gordon, who ran for the presidency; and Senators Manuel Roxas II and Legarda, who vied for the vice-presidency, are supposed to inhibit. President-elect Aquino will also not be allowed to participate to disallow him and other candidates to influence the proceedings.

“But they can sit to give prestige and quorum,” Enrile said.

Enrile said both chambers of Congress will form the rules that will be used in the canvassing on Monday, while the official start of canvassing is set on May 25.

Poll fraud allegations will not disrupt canvassing

At the same time, Enrile maintained yesterday that the allegations of poll fraud in the last May 10 elections would not disrupt the canvassing. 

Complaints of poll fraud should be filed before the President Electoral Tribunal for questions on the presidency and vice-presidency; Senate Electoral Tribunal for senators; and the Comelec for the local officials.

Enrile said alleged poll fraud which show discrepancies between the manually delivered COC and the electronically transmitted COC may be entertained by the congressional board of canvassers. “And only if the ERs cannot be used to correct the discrepancy,” he added.

Enrile said there is a possibility that the national canvassers will turn to the electronic returns if there is a need for it.

As regards the Senate’s decision to secure the 67 PCOS machines from Antipolo, Enrile said these will not be used in the canvassing.

“We are just the custodian. It is subject to the disposition of the bodies that will handle the issues… As far as the canvass is concerned, we cannot go beyond the documents that we have. And which are these? The ERs and the COCs,” Enrile explained.

Enrile said he has notified Escudero, chairman of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on poll automation, about the questions raised on the PCOS machines and the senator has promised to look into it.

“If the joint congressional committee would like to look into the perfectibility or the efficiency or the accuracy of the automated elections then those are material evidence. The oversight committee has jurisdiction to use it,” the Senate President said.

Why the rush?

Senator Arroyo posed a question yesterday over the apparent haste by his colleagues both at the House of Representatives and the Senate to conduct the canvassing of the votes cast for president and vice-president in the last elections.

Arroyo said the agreement of the Senate and House leaderships to resume session a week ahead of the scheduled May 31 is creating problems on quorum.

While the Senate may have no problem reaching a quorum, Arroyo said this not the case in the House. 

“Why advance the date and create a problem of quorum? When Congress adjourned in February, the members, whether senators or congressmen, whether those elected or defeated, had their eyes set on May 31 because that is the date indicated when Congress adjourned,” Arroyo said in a statement.

Arroyo, a veteran lawmaker, said the one-week notice won’t advance the cause of an honest canvass.

Manual audit might be completed before start of canvassing

The Comelec said yesterday that the random manual audit might be completed in time for the start of Congress’ canvassing of votes for president and vice president.

Comelec Commissioner Lucenito Tagle said the processing of the audit returns is being sped up to ensure that by May 24, all the election results from 1,145 polling precincts shall have been analyzed for discrepancies.

“We are doing our best to speed up the process. Hopefully, we can finish this soon,” Tagle noted.

The transmission of the audit returns from the polling precincts had been delayed due to the refusal of some city and municipal treasurers to recognize a Comelec resolution ordering them to do so.

Tagle added that these treasurers wanted the Comelec to issue a written authority before allowing the transmission, citing that the ballots are their responsibility.

The audit returns are sent to the random manual audit team, headed by Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting chair Henrietta de Villa.

After this, the audit returns are encoded and processed by the National Statistics Office (NSO) for possible deficiencies in the manual counting and the counting done by the PCOS machines.

When the evaluation is completed, the NSO will come up with a formula on acceptable variants or deficiency based on overall results. – Jess Diaz, Christina Mendez, Sheila Crisostomo