Comelec Postpones Proclamation of Senators

Slow canvassing has forced the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to postpone the proclamation of the 12 winning senatorial candidates. The said proclamation was supposedly scheduled tonight (Wednesday).

As of this afternoon, the Comelec, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), received only 20 certificates of canvass (COCs) out of a total of 304.
Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. confirmed the cancellation of the proclamation to reporters in a press conference. No agreement yet as to when the proclamation will be held but he said that it will be most probably by tomorrow.

He added that they don’t want to proclaim now ‘if everything is still hanging.’

Brillantes, however said that they can make a proclamation on the first and second place winners but they dont want to do proclamations on a piecemeal basis. According to him, it would rather be that they proclaim a good number of winning candidates.

Comelec earlier blamed bad telecommunications signal for the delay in the transmission of official vote results in some parts of the country.

When asked about it,  Brillantes said that they were analyzing the information from the board of canvassers at the provincial, city, and municipal levels. The reasons behind the delay of transmissions in these areas are being monitored for the NBOC to know when to receive the poll data.

He clarified that they don’t have to wait for a 100 percent of certificate of canvass (COC) from all over the country to make a proclamation of some of the winners.

This year’s mid-term elections proceeding runs the same with the May 2010 first automated elections, where the proclamation of nine senatorial candidates only came after five days from the start of canvassing , then the remaining three were proclaimed three days after.

For this year, Brillantes said that they are targeting the proclamation of 12 senators in five days.

Source: www.inquirer.net, www.abs-cbn.com