Party-list count resumes today

MANILA, Philippines - After proclaiming all 12 winning senatorial candidates, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is set to resume today the canvassing of votes for the party-list groups.

“We are going to meet early (Monday) to discuss certain amendatory rules to speed up the process,” Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes said.

Brillantes said the Comelec is waiting for data on the 12 disqualified party-list groups to enable the poll body to finally settle whether votes for the groups would be counted.

Brillantes said they expect the canvassing for the party-list groups to be more difficult than the senatorial race.

“Just a one-day rest for everybody then we will already start with the party-lists. We are already anticipating that there will be more problems in the party-lists,” he said.

But even with the expected difficulties, Brillantes expressed confidence that Comelec would be able to complete the canvassing and proclaim the 58 representatives of the party-list groups within 10 days.

The Comelec sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC) earlier opted to suspend the canvassing for party-list election amid numerous complaints and inquiries from lawyers of the groups.

Before the canvassing begins, Brillantes said they would first determine what to do with the votes received by the 12 party-lists that Comelec had disqualified out of the 123 groups listed in the ballots.

The canvassing will be done at the Comelec main office in Intramuros, Manila.

At the same time, Brillantes announced the proclamation of the 12 winning senators is already final since there is no way that senatorial bet Richard Gordon at 13th place could overtake the votes of Sen. Gregorio Honasan.

“There is no more issue here. It is finished. We computed all the figures and there is no way that the 13th placer will be able to go into the Magic 12,” Brillantes said.

The NBOC on Saturday proclaimed the final three winning senatorial candidates - Team PNoy’s Cynthia Villar and United Nationalist Alliance’s (UNA) candidates JV Ejercito Estrada and Honasan.

Based on the 129 out of 304 Certificates of Canvass (COCs) representing 39.9 million votes, Villar placed 10th with 13,696,120 votes with Estrada (13,552,991) and Honasan (13,070,031) placing 11th and 12th, respectively.

Honasan has 705,940 more votes than Gordon.

Comelec Commissioner Christian Lim said it is already statistically impossible for Gordon to be able to edge out Honasan.

He said the remaining uncanvassed votes were only about 355,000, mostly from the overseas absentee voting (OAV).

The Comelec, however, will still count the remaining uncanvassed COCs and tally up the last vote even after the proclamation.

The accredited poll watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) also resumed their public tally of the electronically transmitted results in the Comelec transparency server following the proclamation of all 12 winning senatorial candidates.

PPCRV chair Henrietta de Villa said they did not stop getting the electronically transmitted results from the Comelec.

“The transparency server did not stop transmitting results to us, What was temporarily suspended was the release to the public of results until proclamation of the 12 winning senatorial candidates has been completed,” De Villa said.

“Since this happened last night (Saturday night proclamation), PPCRV was immediately showing, announcing again these transmitted election results from the TS (transparency server) to us,” she added.

As of 5:20 p.m. yesterday, the PPCRV had received about 47 percent, or almost 37,000 of the 78,166 election returns (ERs) and waiting for their logistics provider to deliver about 52 percent, or more than 41,000 ERs for their ongoing manual audit.

In the PPCRV count, Honasan had a hold on the last senatorial slot with 10,620,573 votes. Ejercito had 11,010,075 votes.

De Villa said the PPCRV would also follow up their requests with the Comelec to be provided with the manually uploaded results, as well as the audit logs reviewed by the poll body to investigate allegations that a Smartmatic IT personnel tampered with the election results. -Rainier Allan Ronda