MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections, sitting as the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC), hopes to proclaim the 12 winning senators by Friday at the earliest, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said yesterday.
As of 4 p.m. yesterday, the NBOC had canvassed 13 of the 30 Certificates OCs it received from different urbanized cities, provinces, and Philippine posts abroad.
The NBOC reconvened yesterday morning to start the official canvassing of the results of senatorial and party-list elections. The COCs from the local absentee voting, Baguio City, and the Province of Ifugao were among the first canvassed.
Garcia said the NBOC will be canvassing a total of 175 COCs before the winning senators and party-list groups can be proclaimed.
“Today, we may be able to receive 80 to 85 percent of all the COCs. We are expecting 175 COCs. Hopefully, we would be able to finish our canvassing until Wednesday morning, at least,” Garcia told “Storycon” on One News yesterday.
Garcia said the proclamation may also include the senators and party-list congressmen who won in the May 12 midterm elections.
“We are doing separate proclamation because it is a ceremony. We are giving them the honor, to the winners because it is their moment,” he said.
Garcia said the Comelec cannot yet give the total voter turnout for this year’s elections because they can only see it in the canvass report.
According to the poll chief, the total voting population in the 2022 presidential elections was 66 million, while for 2025, it is 68,438,965.
“By the 2028 elections, our voting population will be at 70 to 71 million,” Garcia said.
As of yesterday afternoon, election watchdog Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting had received almost 98 percent of the votes for the midterm elections, with over 90,000 precincts counted.
PPCRV spokesperson Ana de Villa Singson said this resolved the “significant discrepancy” it earlier flagged between the data accessible to them and the figures reflected on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) public access website in terms of election return receipt.
She said that as of 3:16 p.m. yesterday, the PPCRV had already received 97.28 percent of the votes, with a total of 91,083 precincts counted.
Coming in trickles
Singson said the PPCRV is still waiting for 2.72 percent of the election results to be transmitted, but noted that this will come in “trickles already” and no movement among the winning bets are expected.
In zeroing in on the transmission data, Singson said in the Bangsamoro region, only 73.55 percent of the precincts have transmitted their results while the overseas absentee voting is still at 89.26 percent.
Meanwhile, in Region XI, 94.86 percent of the precincts have transmitted their results.
“Aside from these three, all the regions transmitted above 95 percent already,” Singson said.
However, she said they could not yet verify if there was manipulation in the data, following the speculations raised due to the delay in data transmission.
Singson said this would be determined in the random manual audit, which has already started, and the unofficial parallel count the PPCRV will conduct.
The PPCRV said the discrepancy in the data was due to the “long processing time” and the difference of data formats that each of the stakeholders with access to transparency servers receives.
“Comelec gets the data in a different format than we do. The data on their server is immediately human readable. Our data, on the other hand is machine readable, which needs to be converted into a format understandable by everyone” Singson said.
PPCRV and fellow poll watchdog National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections previously sought an explanation from the Comelec on the “delayed and incomplete transmission” of election results from the automated counting machines, spurring doubts on the authenticity of the 2025 poll results.
The PPCRV earlier noted that as of yesterday morning, the Comelec dashboard was already showing around 98.75 percent transmission, but the results file the PPCRV received only accounts for 79.9 percent of election returns.
Technical issues
“Where’s the 18 percent that we’re not seeing? I’m sure there’s an explanation. Given the leadership and the transparency that Comelec has shown so far, thus far we have faith and we have strong hope that they’re going to explain that to us,” she said in a press conference.
Singson also explained that the PPCRV encountered technical issues on the evening of May 12, which resulted in the delayed release of its election data reports.
She said that when they received the initial data from Comelec in different file formats, they observed “discrepancies” between its internal count and publicly reported figures by other transparency server receiving parties, prompting them to hold off from publishing the results.
PPCRV co-IT director William Yu said that after filtering the “duplicates” from the data, it was then that the watchdog group’s data matched the initial tallies.
Go thankful
Sen. Bong Go, who emerged as the top candidate in the initial count of the 2025 midterm senatorial elections, vowed to continue his mandate with utmost humility, hard work, and compassionate brand of public service.
Speaking across multiple media platforms following the release of partial and unofficial results, Go reaffirmed his mission to serve without fanfare.
“My personal assessment is that Filipinos just want whomever they chose to just do their job. Maybe they just don’t want trouble. They just want their chosen leaders to work, so maybe, this is a message that we should all buckle down to work. Let’s get down to business,” Go said in an interview with ANC.
“That’s what the Filipinos expect of us – to do our mandate. That’s why we are here to work and service our countrymen,” he added.
As of May 13, partial results showed Go as the frontrunner in the 2025 senatorial race, despite what he described as the most difficult campaign of his political life.
He told One News: “There are about 20 percent of the electorate that don’t want trouble. They want their chosen leaders to just perform their duty.”
He admitted the grueling nature of the campaign.
“The campaign is hard. In a sense, it’s all personal efforts, unlike in 2019 when former president Duterte was still there,” he told ANC.
“I combed the corners of the Philippines. Wherever it may be, I go there. I really want to bring government services down to the people, especially medical services, to the less fortunate,” he added.
“We have no stage. We help each other in the motorcades, in our sorties,” he told GMA as he recalled how he and his fellow “DuterTEN” candidates made use of their minimal resources.
In multiple interviews, Go acknowledged former president Rodrigo Duterte as his political mentor, though he stressed that Duterte never interfered in his decisions or legislative work.
“He said he will never interfere with me, and just do what is right band I will never be wrong,” Go told ANC.
“He also told me that if I put the interest of Filipinos and the country first, I will never go astray,” he added.
“Thank you to the Lord, to Allah, to our Filipino people for the continued trust. And of course, to former president Duterte who was my mentor in public service,” he said.
Pressed by TV5 on past reports that Duterte once urged him to consider the presidency, Go said: “I have no ambitions because only God knows. Don’t aspire for those things; just do what the job is. Just do the work. That’s I’ve been doing.”
“I’m happy to be reelected because this is a big deal already as an incumbent senator. This is a referendum for us,” he said, referring to the tide of support given to Duterte-allied candidates.
Go noted that his reelection bid may hopefully be an affirmation of his performance saying, “This is the most important performance rating if you did your job in those six years.”
Meanwhile, he empathized with his political allies who did not make it into the initial Magic 12.
“I am sad about my partymates, but only God knows what will happen. Only God knows,” he told ANC.
As the Senate’s composition begins to take shape, Go said he has not yet fully processed the implications: “It’s still sinking in.”
Amid the results and the heat of politics, he said he remains focused on service: “I never became a problem. I just worked and prioritized service over politics. That’s my secret.”
Throughout all his interviews, Go circled back to his message: “With all humility and sincerity, thank you to our countrymen. I will work harder and prioritize the people’s welfare,” he said.
“I am not a politician that will leave you with promises. I will just do my duty to the Filipino people,” he assured.
Duty ahead
Meanwhile, Sen. Joel Villanueva congratulated in advance the incoming 12 senators, advising them to brush up on their new duties in the upper chamber.
“Our job is no joke, because we are not just legislators. We also work doubly hard as both lawmaker and judge,” Villanueva said after casting his vote at the Bunlo Elementary School in Bocaue, Bulacan on Monday.
Villanueva was referring to the senators’ role as members of the impeachment court.
In the upcoming 20th Congress, the Senate, when it resumes session, will start tackling the impeachment complaint filed against Vice President Sara Duterte over her alleged misuse of confidential funds.
Former ACT-CIS party-list Rep. Erwin Tulfo, one of the anticipated senator-elects, vowed to work with members of the Senate regardless of political affiliation.
“What the Filipino needs to see is a collaborating crop of senators and public officials, so my first order of business once officially elected to the Senate is I will talk to both sides,” he said in a statement. — Mayen Jaymalin, Marc Jayson Cayabyab, Jose Rodel Clapano