NBOC resumes canvassing of votes from Filipinos abroad

The Congress, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers, on Friday afternoon resumed the canvassing of votes from overseas absentee voting, adhering to its earlier plan to first open manually prepared certificates of canvass. Present in the plenary to witness the opening of the COCs were Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Prospero Nograles, chairman of the 18-man joint congressional canvassing committee. Also present were Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri, Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Senators Edgardo Angara, Joker Arroyo, Gregorio Honasan II, Representatives Simeon Datumanong, Rufus Rodriguez, Roilo Golez, Teodoro Locsin Jr., and Crispin Remulla. To expedite the process, the NBOC allowed the simultaneous opening of two COCs. The first to be canvassed Friday were Czech Republic, The Netherlands, South Korea, North Korea, and Japan. Noticing that the process was still slow, Golez proposed that the body leave the ceremonial opening of the ballot boxes to the Commission on Elections. But Pimentel objected, saying the NBOC cannot delegate its duty to check on the documents to other body. Enrile and Nograles then ruled that, starting Monday, they will let the secretariat to do the ceremonial opening in the morning then the sealed COCs will be presented to the NBOC when it resumed its session in the afternoon. Later in the day, they plan to open the simultaneous opening 10 COCs at a time. In a separate interview with reporters, Nograles believed that the body will be able to complete the canvassing of manually prepared COC by Tuesday next week. “We hope to finish the manual COC Tuesday then we will tackle the problem with electronically transmitted COCs. We will be able to do so much by next week," he said. Of the 278 COCs, 174 were manually prepared while 104 were electronically transmitted. Nograles said the problem was that the NBOC members were not satisfied with the security features of the precinct count optical scan machines, among others - RJAB Jr., GMANews.TV