The running joke, she acknowledged on Friday, was that she was actually at the Philippine International Convention Center where the Commission on Elections proclaimed the top six winners of last Monday’s senatorial race.
But after consulting with her lawyers, Binay said, she realized the “prudent thing to do” was to wait until “every vote has been considered.”
“After thinking and soul searching, if ever this would be my first proclamation, I wanted there to be no question on my proclamation,” Binay said during a press conference Friday.
“For my own peace of mind, I want that the final result is truly the will of the people,” she told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “I was not comfortable that I would be proclaimed in this manner.”
Binay said she was looking for a “definitive” victory in her first attempt at an elective position.
And with only 72 out of the 304 certificates of canvass considered by the National Board of Canvasses, she said the 5.7 million votes she had garnered were still far from showing the real picture.
The 72 CoCs accounted for only 13,384,981 voters, a far cry from the 52 million registered voters.
“Who knows? It might even turn out later on that I don’t belong in the first six, that I am in fact in the second half [of the Magic 12],” she said.
Binay insisted she did not skip her own proclamation because her United Nationalist Alliance had asked the Comelec to defer the proclamation of all 12 winners until certain issues had been resolved.
Having been criticized for the slow pace of the canvassing, the Comelec promptly junked the UNA petition and proceeded with the proclamation.
Navotas Representative Toby Tiangco, UNA secretary general, said the proclamation set a “bad precedent,” noting that the Comelec did not say how many votes the winning candidates had actually garnered. There was also no mention of their actual rankings, he said.
“What if they do this again in 2016? We would have a new president without knowing how many votes he got and just because the Comelec said he won,” he told the Inquirer in a separate interview.
Asked about UNA’s next move, he said: “Nahihilo na nga yung mga lawyers namin [Our lawyers are getting dizzy].”
Binay noted that even in local elections, winners were not proclaimed until most of the votes had been canvassed.
“Of course, I’m thankful that I was named a winner,” she said, “but it’s difficult when they are not doing what is supposed to be done.”
Tiangco, who has won a second term, cited his own experience when he had to wait for another six hours before he was finally proclaimed, all because the Comelec waited for the last remaining CoCs. With a report from Matikas Santos, INQUIRER.net
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| Proclamation of first 6 Senators (Angara, Cayetano, Legarda, Poe, Binay no show) |
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