The Congressional Canvass Report Redux

CONGRESS on June 4, 2004 convened its joint committee to canvass the votes for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the May elections. Twenty-two lawmakers sat in that committee, with eleven members from each of the two chambers.

On June 23 the committee issued its report, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Noli de Castro were declared to have won as president and vice president.

The Joint Committee … found all the one hundred eighty (180) certificates of canvass (COCs) from seventy-nine (79) provinces, twenty-two (22) highly urbanized cities, seventy-four (74) Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) countries, and one (1) Local Absentee Voting (LAV), and three (3) certificates of canvass from Northern Samar, Maguindanao and Lanao del Norte covering special elections held in those provinces, authentic and duly executed.

Rival parties, we all remember, were never as convinced: They issued objections to COCs that were, based on their own documentation, riddled with at best inconsistencies and at worst, outright fraud. In the end, the committee report said:

All the inconsistencies found in the certificates of canvass and/or statements of votes were satisfactorily explained by (the Boards of Canvassers) before the Joint Committee.

In his written opinion concurring with the committee report, co-chair Sen. Francis Pangilinan would say the proceedings were merely "administrative," and that those who wanted to raise questions about any irregularities should bring their case not to the canvassing body but to the electoral tribunal.

The hands of the committee are tied and it may not usurp the functions of other agencies and institutions.

Read the joint committee report and some of its annexes:

• Main report
• Annex D: Summary of memoranda submitted by the counsels of candidates
• Annex F: List of provinces with inconsistencies in their COCs and SOVs
• Annex G: List of objected COCs