In an unsurprising turn of events, former Senator Bongbong Marcos and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte held massive leads over their rivals in the presidential and vice presidential race, respectively based on partial and official results provided by the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC) on late Tuesday night, May 24.
The NBOC, which are composed of House of Representatives and Senate members sitting in a joint session, tabulated certificates of canvass (COCs) for the two electoral positions between 2 p.m. and 11 p.m.
At the end of the session Tuesday night, over 100 COCs or 58 percent of the COCs have already been canvassed by the lawmakers. There are 173 total COCs.
Leading the presidential aspirants was Marcos, who at that time amassed 24,052,854 votes. He had more than 12-million vote lead over his closest rival, opposition leader Vice President Leni Robredo, who garnered 11,476,378 votes.
The rest of the top five in the Palace race are as follows: Senator Manny Pacquiao (2,995,094), Manila Mayor Francisco "Isko Moreno" Domagoso (1,258,534) and Senator Panfilo Lacson (700,897).
Over in the vice presidential tiff, Duterte had a firm grip on the top spot, with 24,171,445 votes. Senator Francis Pangilinan, Robredo's running mate, is a far second with 7,215,863 votes.
Rounding up the top five are Senate President Vicente Sotto lll (6,445,891), Dr. Willie Ong (1,337,186), and BUHAY Party-list Rep. Lito Atienza (213,056).
Marcos and his running mate Duterte--dubbed the UniTeam--appear en route to rare majority vote victories based on the partial and official NBOC count.
This would mirror the expected outcome of the polls that has been in the public's mind for weeks now due to exposure from transparency server data. In fact, Marcos and Duterte are already being called by media as presumptive president and presumptive vice president, respectively.
Senate Majority Leader Migz Zubiri, chairman of the Senate contingent to the NBOC, was quite happy overall with the speed by which they managed to canvass the COCs.
"Maraming, maraming salamat (Thank you very much). This possibly is the fastest canvassing in the history of the elections in the Philippines," Zubiri said following the suspension of the joint session.
The canvassing of votes will resume at around 9 a.m. Wednesday.
The Marcos camp is already preparing for the possible proclamation of winners later that day.