INQUIRER.net Eleksyon 2007

Still 8-2-2 for GO in Comelec count

Inquirer

Edson C. Tandoc Jr. Nikko Dizon Jocelyn Uy

MANILA, Philippines—The Genuine Opposition continues to dominate the senatorial race, according to latest results from the ongoing national canvassing of the Commission on Elections as of last night.

Eight GO candidates, two Team Unity candidates and two independent candidates were in the Magic 12 as of 10:30 p.m.

Loren Legarda (GO) was still No. 1 with 1,374, 267 votes.

Among the big gainers last night were Gregorio Honasan (independent) who climbed from the 13th slot to 8th and Antonio Trillanes IV (GO) from 12th to 9th.

On the other hand, Aquilino Pimentel III (GO) slid from 8th to 11th while Joker Arroyo (TU) fell from 9th to 12th place.

Francis Escudero (GO) maintained his second spot with 1,306,492 votes, followed by fellow GO candidates Panfilo Lacson with 1,176,602 and Manuel Villar with 1,108,395.

Francis Pangilinan (independent) was fifth with 1,051,520 votes, followed by Benigno Aquino III (GO) with 995,517 and Alan Peter Cayetano (GO) with 892,134.

Honasan climbed to 8th with 854,458 votes as votes from Aurora, Quirino, Ifugao and La Union were canvassed.

Trillanes improved to 9th place with 845,186 votes.

Still at 10th place was Edgardo Angara (TU) with 832,403 votes.

Pimentel slid to 11th place with 792,284 votes while Arroyo fell to the 12th slot with 786,415.

At the 13th slot was Ralph Recto (TU) with 711,727 votes

Prospero Pichay (TU)—among the top scorers in Ilocos Sur, Camiguin and Dinagat Island—who made made it to the 11th slot in early tabulation fell to 14th place with 668,414 votes.

Luis “Chavit” Singson (TU) topped the race in his home province of Ilocos Sur with 208,405 votes over Legarda’s 142,788. But it was not enough to propel him into the Magic 12; he ranked 20th.

He scored badly in nearby La Union.

Up and down

Pichay scored well in Ilocos Sur, Siquijor, Camiguin and Dinagat, while Angara scored well in his home province of Aurora, as well as Quirino and Ifugao.

Included in the partial total, computed by the Inquirer from the votes read by the Comelec commissioners sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBC), are votes from 16 provinces and three cities in the National Capital Region, as well as 55 countries for the overseas absentee voting.

Votes from Zambales, Marinduque, Mountain Province and Italy were also canvassed but these had not been included yet in the partial tally as the canvassers discovered discrepancies between a few entries in the certificates of canvass (COCs) and the Statement of Votes (SOVs).

In Zambales, for instance, the votes of Escudero and Alan Cayetano (GO) each reached more than 100,000 in the SOV. But in the COC, their votes were written as just over 20,000.

The discrepancies are to be solved by the tabulation committee.

Within 10 days

Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos Sr. yesterday vowed to speed up the canvassing to attempt to finish it within 10 days, earlier than in the 2004 elections.

Canvassing will go on today and tomorrow, he said.

The interment of Commissioner Florentino Tuason’s mother is scheduled on Sunday.

Abalos said that while the poll body condoled with Tuason, “we do not allow ourselves to be affected by personal problems.”

But what’s taking the Comelec so long to release the official results tabulated by the National Board of Canvassers?

Three days into the tabulation of the COCs, the Comelec has yet to come up with its own updated consolidated figures in the senatorial and party-list elections, leaving reporters to add up the results read out loud by the NBC.

At press time, the official tally sheet for the senatorial race issued by the Comelec showed COCs canvassed on Wednesday reflecting 1,897 voters in the overseas absentee voting.

For the party-list elections, the Comelec released COC results from abroad tallied on Thursday noon with only 1,383 votes consolidated.

(There is a huge tally board at the gate of the Philippine International Convention Center. But it only showed the running total of COCs from the overseas voting.)

To give the public the real picture of the Comelec canvassing of COCs, reporters are forced to make up for the lack of updated official results.

Computations

When the robe-clad commissioners take their seats on a rostrum at the PICC, signaling the start of the canvassing, reporters drop everything to jot down the results of the COCs.

Technology-savvy reporters use their computers equipped with number processors to input these figures for expeditious accounting and ranking of contending senatorial candidates and party-list groups.

But those comfortable with the old-fashioned way of computing rely on calculators, ledgers and, yes, their own mathematical prowess, if any.

But the “taxing work” of adding up results of the canvassed COCs ahead of the poll body is no longer new to veteran Comelec reporters, and even for representatives of senatorial candidates and party-list groups who covered the canvassing in the 2004 presidential election.

Real picture

On May 16, the first day of the canvassing, a media relations officer of a leading senatorial candidate arrived at the media center and offered reporters a tally sheet to use in encoding the results.

Another media officer of a known party-list group was more tech-savvy, lending his flash disk containing his group’s own computation to reporters for cross-checking.

“If you want to see the real picture, you have to be inside the [PICC] and do the actual tallying,” the media officer, who requested anonymity, told the Inquirer.

ABS-CBN reporter Lynda Jumilla said the Comelec’s education and information division (EID) used to help reporters add up the figures. However, these were still unaudited results by the Comelec and, therefore, could not be considered official.

Jumilla also covered the 1992, 1995, 1998 and 2004 elections.

She said this was the first time that she added up the results of the COCs on her own without the EID’s help.

“They used to give us the running totals at a certain hour of the day. But those were still unaudited,” she said. “This time, if we rely on the Comelec to give us totals, we’ll get them tomorrow. By then, the story would be stale.”

Jumilla said she tried to be as careful as she could by listening intently to the canvassers read out the COC results. She said she would jot these down in her notebook and the tally sheet provided by a media officer, and countercheck her figures with other reporters.

Slow pace

If she makes a mistake, “I’m willing to point it out in my next story,” Jumilla said.

Comelec executive director Pio Jose Joson, who also chairs the canvassing supervisory committee, admitted that the poll body was slow in releasing the official results.

He explained that it was because the process included several layers of cross-checking.

From the tabulation, the results will be audited, encoded and audited again before they are released.

“We check, countercheck and double-check,” Joson said in an interview.

He added that there was nothing wrong with the media and candidates’ representatives coming up with their own tabulation.

“The figures are based on official COC results from the [NBC],” he said.

As for the media, Joson said they could even release their own computation as long as they mentioned that the figures were based on the NBC canvassing.

But what if there would be discrepancies between what has been released by the media and what would be issued by the Comelec?

“There could be discrepancies, but it would be minimal,” a confident Joson said.

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