Winning senators may be proclaimed Friday

MANILA, Philippines, May 14 ------ The Commission on Elections, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), hopes to proclaim the 12 winning senators by Friday at the earliest, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said. 

As of 4 p.m. yesterday, the NBOC had canvassed 13 of the 30 Certificates OCs it received from different urbanized cities, provinces, and Philippine posts abroad. The NBOC reconvened yesterday morning to start the official canvassing of the results of senatorial and party-list elections. The COCs from the local absentee voting, Baguio City, and the Province of Ifugao were among the first canvassed. 

Garcia said the NBOC will be canvassing a total of 175 COCs before the winning senators and party-list groups can be proclaimed. “Today, we may be able to receive 80 to 85 percent of all the COCs. We are expecting 175 COCs. Hopefully, we would be able to finish our canvassing until Wednesday morning, at least,” Garcia told “Storycon” on One News yesterday. 

Garcia said the proclamation may also include the senators and party-list congressmen who won in the May 12 midterm elections. “We are doing separate proclamation because it is a ceremony. We are giving them the honor, to the winners because it is their moment,” he said. Garcia said the Comelec cannot yet give the total voter turnout for this year’s elections because they can only see it in the canvass report. 

According to the poll chief, the total voting population in the 2022 presidential elections was 66 million, while for 2025, it is 68,438,965. “By the 2028 elections, our voting population will be at 70 to 71 million,” Garcia said. As of yesterday afternoon, election watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting had received almost 98 percent of the votes for the midterm elections, with over 90,000 precincts counted. 

PPCRV spokesperson Ana de Villa Singson said this resolved the “significant discrepancy” it earlier flagged between the data accessible to them and the figures reflected on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) public access website in terms of election return receipt. She said that as of 3:16 p.m. yesterday, the PPCRV had already received 97.28 percent of the votes, with a total of 91,083 precincts counted. 

Source: philstar.com