BY RAYMOND AFRICA and WENDELL VIGILIA
SENATE minority leader Franklin Drilon yesterday said petitions against winning candidates for president and vice president can be brought before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) once they have been declared winners by Congress.
Drilon made the remark following petitions filed before the Supreme Court last week seeking to cancel the certificate of candidacy (COC) of presumptive president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and to stop Congress from proclaiming him president due to Marcos’ alleged material misrepresentation in his COC.
Drilon, a former justice secretary, said the SC cannot stop Congress from exercising its constitutional mandate of canvassing votes for the presidential and vice presidential race, and to proclaim the winners.
Drilon said Congress is expected to finish canvassing and to proclaim the winners this week, and it cannot wait for the Supreme Court to issue a decision on the petitions filed against Marcos Jr. Otherwise, he said, there will be a constitutional crisis as the country will have no president and vice president on June 30.
Congress will resume sessions today. The Senate and the House of Representatives are set to hold a joint public session tomorrow to convene as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), which is mandated by the Constitution to count the votes cast and proclaim the country’s next president and vice president. Canvassing of votes will be from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
“May tungkulin ang NBOC na mag-proklama ng mga nanalo. Kung tapos na ang lahat at sa tingin ng mga natalo may mali ang Kongreso sa pag-proklama, pumunta sila sa Presidential Electoral Tribunal na siyang binigyan ng kapangyarihan na mag resolve nito (The NBOC has the duty to proclaim the winners. After everything is through, and the losing candidates think that Congress is wrong in proclaiming the winners, they can go to the Presidential Electoral Tribunal which was given the power to resolve the issue),” Drilon told radio dzBB.
He said Marcos Jr. brought his protest before the PET when he lost to Leni Robredo in the vice presidential run in 2016.
“Kung sa tingin nila hindi qualified si Marcos Jr. after proclamation, pumunta sila sa PET. Ginawa rin yan ni Marcos Jr. noon, he filed a protest sa PET, sabi niya siya dapat i-proklama na VP si Leni Robredo (If they think that Marcos Jr. is not qualified after being proclaimed winner, they can go to the PET. Marcos Jr did it; he filed a protest before the PET. He said that Leni Robredo should not be proclaimed vice president),” Drilon said.
If the petitioners are not contented with the PET, they can still ask the Supreme Court to rule on their concerns, Drilon said.
He said the overwhelming number of votes received by Marcos Jr. Is not enough to extinguish any of his liabilities.
“May kasabihan tayo na ‘the people have spoken,’ pero hindi mabubura lahat ng legal issues sa kanya (We have a saying that ‘the people have spoken,’ but that does not eliminate all legal issues against him),” he said, adding that the tax issues and eligibility of Marcos Jr. to join the presidential race despite his conviction on a tax case can also be raised before the PET after he is proclaimed winner.
Outgoing Speaker Lord Allan Velasco assured the public that the canvassing of votes and proclamation of winners will be “expeditious, transparent and credible.”
“The Congress, sitting as the NBOC, is duty-bound to make sure that the entire process of vote counting and transmission of results will be done expeditiously and with utmost transparency and integrity,” Velasco said.
As agreed upon by the leadership of both houses of Congress, the Legislature is scheduled to proclaim the president and vice president on May 27, despite the pending cases against Marcos Jr.
“We will perform our constitutional duty quickly and efficiently. We will be combining accuracy and speed in order for us to meet our committed timeline,” Velasco said. “Our duty to canvass is mandated by the Constitution itself. Nothing therein says that this duty is suspended while a case, which has already been dismissed by the Commission on Elections, is pending with the Supreme Court. We are bound to proclaim the winning president and vice president, and uphold the will of the people with dispatch.”
Today, the House and the Senate will resume their separate sessions to adopt a joint resolution convening Congress to a joint session and act as NBOC for the two highest elective posts of the land.
The Senate will initiate the delivery to the House of ballot boxes containing certificates of canvass (COCs) to be counted by a joint committee which is tasked to undertake the actual counting of votes cast for president and vice president.
Both chambers are expected to formally form a contingent to the joint committee. Each contingent will have seven regular members and four alternate members. The heads of each panel shall be designated by the speaker and the Senate president who shall serve as presiding officers during the joint session.
The Senate president shall open, in the order they were received, all electronically transmitted COCs in the consolidation and canvassing system (CCS) and all manually counted and physically delivered COCs not electronically transmitted in the CCS.
The joint committee will decide all questions and issues raised involving the COCs by a majority of vote of its members, each panel voting separately.
In case the two panels disagree, the decision of the chairperson shall prevail. In case of a deadlock, the matter shall be resolved by the Speaker and the Senate President.
Once canvassing is completed, the joint committee report shall be approved and signed by a majority of the members of the joint committee. The report will be approved and signed by a majority of the members of the joint committee. Each panel will vote separately.
The report will then be submitted to the joint public session for consideration and approval.
A majority of senators and House members, voting separately, shall approve the report and adopt the resolution of both chambers proclaiming the duly elected president and vice president.
Upon adoption of the resolution of both houses, the Speaker and the Senate President shall proclaim the president-elect and the vice president-elect.
