Congress hoped to finish the canvassing of votes for president and vice-president of the Philippines Thursday night, leading to the proclamation of the winners by Tuesday next week, Senate majority leader Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri said. As of Thursday morning, only 71 of the total 278 Certificates of Canvass (COCs) remained to be counted. “If we continue this, we can have a proclamation on Tuesday ,” Zubiri said. “We're moving fast. Thursday night, we'll hopefully finish the canvassing,” he added. As of the latest official count by Congress, Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III continued to lead the presidential race by 4 million votes over his closest rival, former president Joseph Estrada. Aquino had 11,460,226 votes while Estrada trailed with 7,391,416. The vice presidential race was still too close to call with Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay leading by less than 200,000 votes over his closest rival, Senator Mar Roxas. Binay had 10,916,224 votes while Roxas had 10,745,422. Zubiri said Congress could proclaim the winners by Tuesday afternoon as the national board of canvassers still needs to consolidate the data it gathered. But Senator Rodolfo Biazon said Congress should not rush the proclamation of the two winners “if in any of the positions, the margin is very slim.” Biazon was referring to the tightly fought vice presidential contest between Binay and Roxas. On Wednesday night, Roxas's camp called for the recounting of 2.6 million votes which were not counted by the automation machines for various reasons. “If indeed there was a technical glitch in how the machines had properly read the null votes — whether these are indeed over-votes or under-votes — it could be a disenfranchisement of about 5 percent of the entire voting population,” said Roxas' lawyer Roland Solis. However, House Speaker Prospero Nograles said Congress will not consider Roxas' protest regarding the “null votes” since it is not Congress' function to look into the issue. Nograles advised Roxas to file a petition before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal instead of airing his protest in Congress. “This is an issue that is properly addressed in an election protest in the proper venue where votes can be recounted swiftly by merely cross-checking the actual votes cast and the electronic image and pictures of the ballots,” Nograles said. He said the verification process, which can be conducted by the electoral tribunal, “won't take too much time” and maybe resolved “as fast as the elections were conducted.” JV Bautista, Binay's lawyer, said the Constitution mandates that the national board of canvassers can only verify questioned certificates of canvass through the election returns. “Unless there is very clear evidence of fraud or malfunction in the process that it will invalidate the count,” the national board of canvassers cannot go back to examining ballots used in the May 2010 polls, he said.
