Inquirer Headlines / Nation
Null votes out, proclamation next week
By Michael Lim Ubac, Kristine L. Alave
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:03:00 06/05/2010
MANILA, Philippines—The joint congressional canvassing committee and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said there will be a proclamation of the country’s next president and vice president next week, shutting the door on vice presidential candidate Sen. Manuel Roxas’ bid to have more than 2.5 million “null” votes for vice president manually counted.
“There is no reason not to proclaim both because as far as I know, there are no issues left to delay the proclamation of one or the other,” said Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, who cochairs the joint canvassing committee with Speaker Prospero Nograles.
Enrile and other committee members have ruled out any further delay of the joint proclamation, which could take place as early as Tuesday, or Wednesday at the latest, thereby rejecting a proposal from Roxas’ lawyers to manually canvass even the 2.6 million null votes, plus 300,000 votes that were not tallied in the certificates of canvass (CoCs).
Enrile said he and other members of the committee saw no reason “so far” to delay the proclamation of the vice president.
“There’s no major problem about the canvassing for both president and vice president,” he said.
The Liberal Party (LP) believes that the close to three million uncounted votes will carry not just Sen. Benigno Aquino III but also his running mate, Roxas, to victory.
Comelec Commissioner Nicodemo Ferrer said Roxas’ claim that three million votes in the vice presidential race were not counted in the May 10 automated elections will not stop the joint proclamation.
Not the proper venue
The issue should be raised before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) that hears election protest cases, “they cannot raise it to stop the proclamation of the president and vice president,” said Ferrer.
“They should file an election protest at the Presidential Electoral Tribunal. It’s not the proper topic at the canvassing. It’s not the proper venue,” he said.
Enrile said he did not foresee any “major problem” in the canvassing of the remaining five CoCs from Davao City (550,236 votes), Bacolod (205,282 votes), Mt. Province (74,791), Eastern Samar (more than 100,000) and Lanao del Sur (more than 500,000).
The joint congressional committee expects to finish the canvassing by Monday, then prepare a committee report for the whole Congress.
The legislature, sitting as the national board of canvassers in joint public session, is the only one empowered by the Constitution to proclaim the highest elective leaders in the land.
Enrile echoed a statement made by Nograles last Thursday that the committee would not consider the issue of the null votes that were not read by the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines.
File protest with PET
“Well, if there are three million null votes, it has to be taken up with the Presidential Electoral Tribunal. We cannot nullify any votes (and) we cannot include votes that are not presented to us for canvassing,” said Enrile.
Enrile, Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri and Sen. Rodolfo Biazon urged the losing candidates to instead file an electoral protest with the PET, which has jurisdiction over fraud, cheating and other issues arising from the just-concluded elections.
Lawyers of other national candidates have proposed that the joint canvassing committee manually count the ballots one by one, particularly those cast in the vice presidential contest.
“In a canvassing process, you cannot open the ballots. Only the Presidential Electoral Tribunal can open the ballot boxes and go to the ballots. The canvassers do not go to the ballots,” said Enrile.
Issue of jurisdiction
Addressing questions on the reliability of electronically generated CoCs and the PCOS machines were “not the jurisdiction of the canvassing body nor of the Senate,” he said.
Claims about fraud or falsification of documents should all be taken up in an electoral protest, Enrile said.
But he noted that the remaining uncanvassed votes could still change the outcome of the vice presidential race.
Jejomar Binay was leading Roxas by less than a million votes when the canvassing adjourned last Thursday.
Last Thursday, the LP claimed that there were about 3 million votes that stand to be voided for various reasons.
About 2.6 million votes could be considered “null” by the Comelec due to overvoting or undershading, LP officials said.
Uncanvassed votes
Around 272,000 votes have yet to be included in the official CoCs, while 80,000 to 140,000 will come from the special elections held last Thursday in Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sarangani and Western Samar.
These as yet uncanvassed votes would make a difference in Roxas’ standing and give him an edge over Binay, the LP said.
But Ferrer said these are issues that should be discussed at the PET.
The Comelec cannot respond to Roxas’ claim as the poll body, acting as the national board of canvassers, only authenticates the certificates of canvass from the provinces and tallies the official results for the senatorial and party-list races, he said.
Asked if there was any basis to Roxas’ claims, Ferrer noted that null votes were not really a new feature of computerized elections. “They are entitled to that allegation,” he said.
In manual elections, there were null votes because the board of election inspectors could not read the names on the ballots. Some voters also wrote the names of the candidates for the wrong positions, Ferrer said.
Ferrer said the null votes in manual elections “may be higher” than the 3 million votes in the automated elections claimed by the Roxas camp.
No protest from Estrada
Deposed President Joseph Estrada will no longer contest the results of the presidential elections even as his party continues to study the many reports of election fraud, according to his spokesperson, Margaux Salcedo.
Salcedo said the ousted leader was “no longer inclined to file any protest. He will respect whatever final outcome is pronounced by the Joint Canvassing Committee in Congress.”
But she said Estrada’s party is studying the claims of electoral fraud from various candidates, “as well as the electronic results which we cannot seem to reconcile with ground reports.”
ABS-CBN television has reported that Estrada has offered his services to Aquino even as he has yet to concede victory to Aquino who leads him by more than five million votes in the ongoing official tally.
Salcedo said Estrada will not concede before the canvassing process ends.
‘Very close’ to Cory
But if Aquino is proclaimed as the country’s next president, “Estrada will take on the role of elderly statesman and would be glad to work with the next administration to pursue his unfinished propoor programs,” Salcedo said.
Salcedo said Aquino and Estrada can work together because they are both from the opposition.
She also claimed that Estrada had become “very close” to the late President Cory Aquino, Aquino’s mother, thus Estrada would find it easy to support the presumptive president-elect.
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Filed under: Erap Statements, erap, joseph estrada, philippine elections
