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Saturday, June 12, 2004
Arroyo leads count with 80 COCs tallied
MANILA -- President Arroyo has widened her lead over opposition standard-bearer Fernando Poe Jr. as Congress continued to canvass on Friday night the votes cast for president and vice president.
Arroyo garnered a total of 978, 913 votes as against Poe's 951,651 votes after the joint congressional committee tabulated 15 more certificates of canvass as of 8:30 p.m. Friday, bringing the total number of COCs canvassed so far to 80.
In the tabulation of votes from Thursday night until Friday noon, Arroyo enjoyed a slight margin over Poe but the opposition candidate overtook her when the canvassing resumed in the afternoon. Arroyo had fallen to second place with the certificates of canvass from the Ilocos Region were tabulated.
By 7 p.m. Friday, Poe, of the Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (KNP), was leading with 766,750 votes as against Arroyo's 656,768 votes.
The Ilocanos were divided between Arroyo and Poe: those in Ilocos Sur province supported Arroyo and she received 140,736 votes there while La Union backed Poe and gave him 169,415 votes.
Among the certificates canvassed Thursday were those from Occidental Mindoro and Zambales and absentee voting in Vietnam, Argentina, Paraguay and Hong Kong.
Arroyo's running mate Noli de Castro overtook Loren Legarda, Poe's vice presidential candidate, in the same tally.
De Castro now has 1,174,166 votes as against Legarda's 1,136,656 votes. De Castro started to overtake Legarda when the certificates in Compostela Valley and Ilocos Sur were canvassed.
In third place in the presidential tally is Sen. Panfilo Lacson, 254,563 votes, followed by Brother Eddie Villanueva, 148,349 votes, and Raul Roco, 131,880 votes.
On the other hand, at third place in the vice presidential race is former Tarlac congressman Hermie Aquino with 61,948 votes and in fourth place is Rodolfo Pajo, 1,815 votes.
Also during the canvassing Friday, outspoken opposition stalwart Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. urged the 22-member committee to ensure that COCs brought before the group should be accompanied by statements of votes (SOVs) in order to prevent further delays and problems.
Pimentel expressed concern that about 30 to 40 COCs under the custody of Congress do not have corresponding SOVs.
He already requested the Congress secretariat to identify the ballot boxes containing the COCs with no SOVs and to ask election officials to produce them.
"Under Republic Act 7166 or the law on synchronized elections and electoral reforms, the COCs and SOVs should go together. We need not examine the SOVs if we have no reason to do so but these should be made available to us," Pimentel said.
He also said the opposition was pleased when the joint committee granted its request to bring the SOVs from Aurora, after it was found out that the document was not attached to the provincial COC.
The COCs contain the total number of votes obtained by candidates per province or city while the SOVs contain the breakdown of votes received by candidates from various towns in the province concerned. Reflected in the election returns are the votes obtained by candidates from each polling precinct. JFF/JPM
(June 12, 2004 issue)
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