CBCP urged: File petition to defer proclamation of winners at nat’l level

MANILA, Philippines — The social action arm of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) should file a formal petition if it wants to delay the proclamation of the 2019 midterm election winners at the national level.

This was what Commission on Elections (Comelec) Spokesperson James Jimenez said Thursday, as he explained that the poll body must follow formal processes to deal with such a request.

CBCP’s National Secretariat for Social Action has called on Comelec to defer the proclamation of winners at the national level pending an investigation on the alleged manipulation of votes during the recently held elections.

“There has to be a formal petition addressed to the Commision (Comelec) en banc. The first step is a formal petition being filed,” Jimenez said in a press briefing.

“Hindi naman pwedeng sasabihin lang, magpe-press release lang tapos sunod na lahat ng tao. Kailangan may formal process tayo,” he added.

Jimenez said he is not aware that such a petition has already been filed.

The Comelec official also noted that deferment of proclamation is a call that the en banc “has to make.”

He also said it is “a little difficult to imagine” that proclamation would be delayed just because of a speculation.

“It’s a little difficult to imagine that’s gotta happen because the independent observers who watched this whole thing unfold, among them there is a consensus that there was no problem at all,” Jimenez said.

“It’s a little difficult to imagine that the entire elections will be suspended essentially because of speculation,” he added.

Comelec earlier said a glitch caused the 7-hour delay in the release of partial election results during Monday’s election.

The unofficial count was delayed after the application for pushing out the results from the Comelec transparency server to third-party organizations suffered a glitch shortly after the voting ended at 6 p.m. May 13, according to Comelec Commissioner Marlon Casquejo.

READ: Comelec blames ‘bottleneck’ for 7-hour server delay

A congressional investigation has been set on June 4 to look into the reported hitch as well as other problems that plagued the 2019 midterm elections.

READ: Congress to probe glitches

(Editor: Katherine G. Adraneda)

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