The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has yet to canvass 24 certificates of canvass from overseas posts and local transmissions, an official disclosed Sunday, May 15.
Comelec acting spokesperson Director John Rex Laudiangco said 149 out of the total 173 COCs (86.30 percent) have already been canvassed so far, covering 65,246,433 registered voters. Out of this, a total of 54,192,824 voters cast their votes for a voter turnout of 83.05 percent.
Out of the 24 COCs, 21 will be manually transmitted to the poll body which sits as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC) for the senatorial and partylist races while three other COCs will be electronically transmitted.
The partial and official results of the elections based on the NBOC’s canvassing are yet to be released by the Comelec as of this writing.
Transmission
Those that will be manually transmitted include 19 COCs from overseas posts including India, Laos, Pakistan, Hungary, Poland, and Chile which already arrived at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City; and Bangladesh, Myanmar, Timor-Leste, Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Vatican City, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Syria, and Mexico which are yet to be delivered.
The two other COCs that are up for manual transmission include one from the Comelec’s Vulnerable Sectors Office (VSO) which covers persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), persons with disabilities (PWDs), indigenous people (IP), and senior citizens; and another one from North Cotabato which covers 63 barangays.
Meanwhile, three COCs will be electronically transmitted to the Comelec en banc: one each from Lanao del Sur; Amman, Jordan; and Hong Kong.
It can be noted that a failure of elections was declared in three towns in Lanao del Sur due to election violence. These are Tubaran, Butig, and Binidayan which cover 14 barangays and 8,295 voters.
Meanwhile, the compact disc (CD) which was supposed to contain the results of the elections in Amman, Jordan was empty.
“Ang nangyari kasi (What happened was that) they were here with the CD. Unfortunately, the CD does not contain any data,” Laudiangco said in a press briefing.
“That’s why the special board of canvassers for Amman, Jordan at the Philippine Embassy will come here bringing with them the laptop so we could extract the results and upload it in our monitoring system,” he added.
As for Hong Kong COC, it covers the election results in Macau, Hong Kong, and Mainland China.
While majority of the results in Macau and Hong Kong were already completed, the COC could still not be transmitted due to Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai, China.
“Unfortunately for mainland China, iyon nga po ang problem natin, ‘yung Shanghai (Our problem is in Shanghai. They are still under lockdown so we have to conduct a special election,” Laudiangco said.
“We are now studying how to transmit all those unaffected by Shanghai,” he added.