Comelec: Winning bets with pending DQ cases may be proclaimed

Candidates for the 2022 elections who have pending disqualification cases could still be proclaimed without a final decision that would prohibit the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to do so, poll Commissioner George Garcia said on Monday.

“Ang rule po kasi natin kapag may proclamation, lalo na po kung ito ay isang tumatakbong indibidwal, hanggat walang pa kasing final na decision doon sa isyu ng disqualification at wala pang nagpe-prevent para kami ay mag-proklama, wala kaming choice para iproklama ang mananalo, lalo na kung ang mananalo ay sa senador, kung halimbawa,” he said during a Laging Handa briefing.

(Our rule is when there is a proclamation, especially if it involves a running individual, as long as there is no final decision on the issue of disqualification and there is nothing to prevent us from proclaiming, we have no choice but to proclaim the winner, especially if the winner is a senator, for example.)

Meanwhile, Garcia said the policies for the proclamation of the winning party-list for this year’s elections will still be discussed by the Comelec.

“Sa party-lists, iba ‘yung rule natin dun. Ang rule dati ay kapag ang party-list ay humaharap ng disqualification, hindi muna pinapa-proklama. Pero kapag naman ang humaharap ng disqualification ay ‘yung nominees, hindi muna pinoproklama na ‘yung nominees pero pinoproklama na ‘yung partylist,” he added.

(For party-lists, our rule is different. The rule before was that when a party-list faces disqualification, it would not yet be proclaimed. But when the ones facing disqualification are the nominees, the nominees would not be proclaimed but the party-list would be proclaimed.)

Garcia announced on Sunday that the Comelec will proclaim all the twelve winning senators on Wednesday afternoon, while partial winning party-list groups will be on Thursday afternoon.

The law provides that a party-list group that gets at least two percent of the total number of votes cast in the party-list race will be entitled to at least one seat in the House of Representatives.

Those who exceed the two percent threshold will be entitled to additional seats proportionate to the number of votes cast, but the total number of seats for each winning party-list group cannot exceed three.

The ACT-CIS and 1-Rider groups are at the top of the party-list race based on the latest partial and official canvassing results as of Saturday, according to the National Board of Canvassers (NBOC).

Meanwhile, actor Robin Padilla is leading the senatorial elections based on the partial and official canvassing NBOC results, with 25,856,168.—LDF, GMA News