Congress resumes canvass

Congress, acting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), resumed its count of the certificates of canvass Friday.

At 1:36 p.m., the NBOC convened with its first order of the day being the deferment of the CoCs from La Union, citing an agreement in the joint canvassing committee to first tabulate the CoCs that are manually counted.

The La Union CoCs were scheduled for canvassing but were set aside for the manually counted CoCs from Hong Kong and Singapore.

But Paranaque Representative Roilo Golez proposed the canvassing of the La Union votes, which were transmitted electronically, saying that there should be a presumption of regularity on the CoCs.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile stressed that Congress had an agreement “that we have to canvass first the CoCs manually done and we will defer the CoCs which are electronically transmitted.”

Golez later yielded to the Congress leaders.

The CoCs from Czech Republic was the first to be canvassed on Friday. On Thursday, the first canvassing day, Congress counted CoCs from absentee voters from Laos, Guam, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, and Thailand.

Senators’ Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and Manuel “Mar” Roxas II lead in the overseas absentee votes in these countries.