No role for presidential, VP bets in Congress canvassing

Senators who ran for president and vice president in the just concluded May 10 polls will not be allowed to sit as committee members when Congress convenes as the National Board of Canvassers (NBC) next week. However, their presence during the first day of the joint session will still be needed for the quorum, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile told reporters Tuesday night. "They can sit to give prestige and quorum...we need them for the quorum but they don’t have to participate in the discussion or in the consideration of any issues," Enrile said. Those to be excluded from the committee are Senators Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" Aquino III, the leading presidential candidate; Manuel Villar Jr; Richard Gordon; Jamby Madrigal; and vice presidential candidates Loren Legarda and Manuel Roxas II. Enrile said a committee, composed of equal number of lawmakers from both chambers, will be formed to do the active work of canvassing. Enrile and House Speaker Prospero Nograles will be sitting in the committee. On the afternoon of May 24 (Monday), the Senate and the House of Representatives will convene separately to adopt the resolution authorizing the holding of the joint session. On that day, both chambers will choose the members of the committee tasked to canvass the votes for president and vice president, as well as discuss the rules governing the canvassing. Around 2 p.m. Tuesday (May 25), a joint session will be held at the Batasan Complex in Quezon City to officially start the canvassing. Jinggoy to inhibit Senate ProTempore Jose 'Jinggoy' Estrada, who won another term in the Senate, had said that he would inhibit himself from the canvassing because his father, former President Joseph Estrada, is one of the presidential contenders. Enrile said that among the candidates, the tandem of Villar and Legarda will definitely be absent during the canvassing, saying both had separately asked authority from him to travel abroad. Villar went out of the country last May 12 and will not be back until May 31. He will be going to Europe and Asia. Legarda, on the other hand, will be in France, United Kingdom and United States from May 20 to June 3. Others who requested authority to travel were Senators Francis Pangilinan (May 15 - 20, US); Estrada (May 15 - 22, Japan); and Gregorio Honasan (June 5 - 23, US) but they will be in the country in time for the canvassing. Random manual audit Enrile said Congress would ask the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for a report on the random manual audit being conducted. "We want the random manual audit to be finished before we start the canvass so we can determine whether there are any errors or discrepancies found and this will make our canvass easier," he said. The Senate leader said the NBC would be using the manually delivered certificates of canvass (COCs) contained in a sealed envelope and the electronically transmitted results. If there are discrepancies between the manual COC and the electronic results, these will initially be set aside. "We will go back to the documents after we finished with the others and if we cannot reconcile the difference, especially if there is substantial difference between the two sources of information then we will go to the election returns," he said. "Because the ERs, to me personally, are the primary document upon which the COCs were based," Enrile explained. He said Congress also requested the Comelec to preserve and make readily available to the NBC all the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines used in the elections, including its primary and back up flash cards. "We want them preserved during the duration of the canvass just in case there is a need for us to go back in time and look into the results there. We are not going to open the ballot boxes, only the performance of the PCOS machines," Enrile said. He added the NBC would try to make the canvassing fast "but we are not going to sacrifice accuracy with speed. We can assure the nation that we will finish it in time to proclaim a president and vice president before June 30." — RSJ/KBK, GMANews.TV