Comelec to poll winners: Not today

The proclamation of winning senatorial candidates was stalled again Tuesday as the Commission on Elections (Comelec) awaited the arrival of the certificate of canvass from Washington DC.

**PIGEONHOLED PROCLAMATION.** For the second time this week, the Commission on Elections postponed the proclamation
of the winning senatorial bets pending the arrival of the certificates of canvass from the United States. **Ey Acasio**

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the remaining COC contains more than 200,000 votes, which may affect the 11th and 12th spots occupied by Bong Revilla and Nancy Binay. JV Ejercito and Paolo Benigno Aquino IV were a close 13th and 14th.

As of May 21, the Comelec’s partial and official tally was at 98.80 percent

Revilla had 14,608,102 votes, Binay had 14,484,839, and close behind were Ejercito with 14,281,173 and Aquino with 14,117,528.

“It looks like today [Tuesday] is not the day for the proclamation,” Jimenez said in a press briefing.

The poll body had originally aimed for a Sunday proclamation, which was moved to Tuesday because of CoCs that had not yet been tallied.

“Very sorry to disappoint everyone. We are currently canvassing the returns from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and we have to await the returns from Washington because they represent more than 200,000 registered voters,” Jimenez said.

“In order to make sure that there will no longer be a movement in the ranking of our elected officials, we need to get that…so not today,” he added.

Jimenez said they expected the electronic transmission of the results Tuesday night.

The National Board of Canvassers had already canvassed 166 CoCs out of 167 as of Tuesday noon.

Also on Tuesday, the maritime Party-list Angkla and the SB Party-list petitioned the Supreme Court to prohibit the Comelec from proclaiming party-list representatives based on the allocation of seats and instead uphold the Court’s July 9, 2009 resolution which ruled as unconstitutional the 2 percent threshold only in relation to the distribution of additional seats in Congress.

In its 2009 ruling, the Supreme Court said that after the first round of allocating guaranteed seats to party-lists that garnered at least 2 percent of the total votes, only the remaining percentage will be used in the second round, where parties are ranked for the allocation of additional seats.