The Senate and the House of Representatives will meet this week to start the official canvassing of votes for president and vice president, the formal process which will end in the proclamation of the winners for two highest government positions in the May 9 elections.
Ballot boxes containing certificates of canvass and election returns for the presidential and vice presidential race arrived at the Batasang Pambansa on Monday morning, where the two chambers of Congress will convene on Tuesday to formally start the counting of votes.
While the Commission on Elections is tasked to oversee the conduct of the elections and to canvass the votes for the senatorial race, the Congress is mandated under the 1987 Constitution to count the votes for president and vice president.
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What is the process?
On Monday, May 23, the Senate and the House of Representatives will resume their sessions separately to adopt a resolution convening Congress to a joint session and act as National Board of Canvassers for president and vice president.
Each chamber will formally create a contingent to the joint committee that will do the actual count of votes for president and vice president on Tuesday, May 24.
Each contingent will consist of seven regular members and four alternate members. Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Speaker Lord Allan Velasco will designate the chairperson of each panel, as well as preside over the joint session.
Sotto, as Senate President, will open all electronically transmitted COCs and all manually counted and physically delivered COCs in order that they were received. The Senate had been receiving these documents since the polls closed on May 9.
If there are questions and issues raised involving the COCs, the joint committee is tasked to resolve them by a majority of vote of its members, each panel voting separately.
If there are disagreements between the two panels, the decision of the chairperson will prevail. If there is a deadlock, the matter will be resolved by Sotto and Velasco as leaders of the two chambers.
After the canvassing of votes, a joint committee report will be issued and approved by a majority of the members of the panel.
The report will then be submitted to a joint public session, during which the majority of senators and House members, voting separately, will approve the report and adopt the resolution of both chambers proclaiming the duty-elected president and vice president.
Once the resolution has been adopted, Sotto and Velasco will proclaim the president-elect and vice president-elect.
Former Sen. Bongbong Marcos and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio are expected to be proclaimed president and vice president after both garnering over 31 million votes in the partial and unofficial tally in the Comelec's transparency server.
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