FORMER Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio were formally declared today as the country’s 17th President-elect and 15th Vice President-elect of the Philippines, respectively.
The Joint Houses of Congress, which served as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC) only needed a little over a day to count the votes from the Certificates of Canvas (COCs).
The Joint Canvassing Committee (JCC), headed by Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri and House Majority Leader Martin Romualdez, declared the processing of COCs as complete by 3:33 p.m.
The canvassing was finished even if the votes from the overseas absentee voting (OAV) of Argentina and Syria was not counted even if the ballot boxes from the two countries have not yet reached the country.
Once the joint committee report of both the Senate and the House of Representatives was approved, the formal proclamation of the two new leaders of the country proceeded.
Based on the NBOC’s latest official partial tally, Marcos Jr. garnered a total of 31,629,783 votes compared to his opponent Vice President Leni Robredo, who got 15,035,773 votes.
For the Vice-Presidential race, Duterte-Carpio led with 32,208,417 votes while second-running Sen. Francis Pangilinan got 9,329,207 votes.
The results came from 171 out of 173 COCs that were counted or about 98.84 percent.
“Since the 1987 Constitution, this is the first time we elected a majority president and vice president…The duly elected president garnered a total of 58.77 percent of the total votes cast and the duly elected vice president gathered a total of 61.53 percent of the total votes,” Zubiri declared during the plenary.
For the senators and congressmen, the canvassing and proclamation of Marcos Jr. and Duterte-Carpio only took 16 day after the election, which is the fastest after the 1986 EDSA Revolution.
During the 1992 manual elections, it took 42 days after the election before former President Fidel Ramos, was proclaimed; it took 18 days, on the other hand, before former President Joseph Estrada was proclaimed president in 1998; 45 days was what it took before former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was proclaimed; for deceased former President Benigno Aquino III, it took 30 days before he was finally proclaimed and 21 days was what it took for outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte to be proclaimed.
“However, I would like to emphasize we did not sacrifice transparency and the authenticity of the results for a speedy count,” Zubiri pointed out.
“Let me urge our kababayans that it is a time to heal from this divisive campaign. It is a time to respect the will of the majority of our electorate,” he added.