Congress proclaims Marcos, Duterte-Carpio as president, VP
By Robina Asido
After only two days of canvassing, the Congress on Wednesday proclaimed former President Ferdinand ''Bongbong''Marcos Jr and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio as the next president and vice president of the Republic of the Philippines
"The results of the canvass shows that Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. obtain the highest number of votes for the position of the president garnering a total of 31, 629,783 votes with the lead of 16,594,010 votes over the second place," Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said during the proclamation after the canvassing at the House of Representatives in Quezon City.
"On the other hand, Madam Inday Sara Zimmerman Duterte obtained the highest number of votes for vice president with 32,208,417 votes with a lead of 22,879,210 votes over her closest opponent," he added.
Both houses of Congress adopted the report of the joint congressional canvassing committee, which found Marcos and Duterte-Carpio winners of the May 9 national and local elections.
Zubiri said the joint congressional committee canvassed a total of 171 certificate of canvass (COCs) from provinces, highly urbanized cities, local absentee voting, overseas absentee voting and found all of them to be authentic and duly executed.
He noted that the result of this year's election marks a milestone in Philippine history.
"The result of the selection is historical in several ways. First, it has the highest number of votes cast in our nation's history with an 82 percent voter turnout totaling to 55,197,306 votes. Second since the 1987 Constitution this is the first time that we elected a majority president and vice president," said Zubiri.
"A phenomenon indeed in a multi party system under a presidential republican government, the duly elected president garnered a total of 58.77 percent of the total votes cast in the last May 9, 2022 elections and the duly elected vice president garnered a total of 61.53 percent of the total vote cast," he added.
Zubiri said this year's canvassing is the fastest in history.
"The canvassing of Congress and joint public session took only two days to finish, I would like to note that this canvassing is the fastest in our nation's history. another milestone for Philippine congress," he said.
"However, we would like to emphasize we did not sacrifice transparency and authenticity of the result for the speedy counts, the process was hastened due to several factors," he added.
Earlier, Zubiri said the Congress concluded the canvassing on Wednesday as the remaining COC's can no longer affect the result of the presidential and vice presidential election.
Some of COCs which failed to arrive are from Mandaluyong, Sulu, Manila and Cagayan de Oro. Surigao. The Commission on Elections apologized for this, with one official citing lack of sleep by its people.
"As we said in many instances earlier, we do not want to disenfranchise any Filipino voter. However in this late stage, we concur with the findings of the house panel that we may conclude today's canvassing as anyway the votes will not change the ranking of any of our candidates from 1 to 10," he said.
Both Marcos and Duterte-Carpio and their relatives arrived in the House of Representatives before the actual proclamation was made on Wednesday afternoon.
Former First Lady Imelda Marcos, 92 years old, came to the proclamation. DMS
