2010 Elections: Dutertes Proclaimed as Winners in Davao Polls

Cullo said the winning candidates could have gone ahead with the proclamation because the uncounted results are already “very negligible,” he told the media during the break. He said Comelec officers in the region were amenable to the early proclamation.

He said the region earlier filed a petition before the Commission en banc in Manila to allow them to proclaim winners even if the canvassing has not yet been one hundred percent completed.

Cullo said Director Sumalipao had told him that the Comelec Commissioners already approved the petition in principle but that they still had to wait in the evening.

“We are confident though that we can do the proclamation tonight,” he told the media.

But the rule says that the city canvassers could not do so until the canvassing is one hundred percent completed.

Tapak is a far flung barangay which requires a total five hours travel time, including two hours by horse, because there are roads that are not passable by vehicles.

The status of the transmission of results from the two polling clusters in Labo and Butay was not yet known.

There was also a problem with one of the flash cards coming from polling areas in Biao, Guianga in Tugbok District. Cullo said one of them was switched with a flashcard coming from a polling cluster in Digos.

The progress of canvassing had reached 99.40 per cent when the City Board of Canvassers decided to stop at around 11 in the evening.

A tabulation of figures from the CCS laptop was flashed in the projector screen. It has four columns each bearing the figures: 99.40 per cent; 943,309; 577,602, and 38.76 per cent, respectively.

The audience at the Sangguniang Panlungsod hall, most of whom were poll watchers could only surmise on what they meant as there was no description of the figures that were flashed on the screen.

City Board of Canvassers chair Danilo Cullo presides over the canvassing at the Sangguniang Panlungsod Hall. (Photo by Jose Hernani / Davao Today / bulatlat.com)

No one from the board of canvassers also bothered to tell. “It had been going on like that the previous night,” Emma Dawal, a poll watcher of partylist Bayan Muna said.

Figures were flashed on the widescreen projector without the benefit of a description, much less an explanation from anyone among the Comelec authorities, the poll watchers complained.

This left many at the canvassing hall guessing.

Cullo declared the canvassing adjourned at about 11 midnight. They were set to resume at 1 pm the next day to allow time for the election canvassing personnel to rest.

Before break-up could be officially declared, lawyers representing the different parties batted hard for a printed copy of the tabulation results to make sure that they will have a back-up in case the CCS laptop, the one used for canvassing votes, would bog down.

The request made by the lawyers was almost denied by the CCS laptop operator who, at first, said that it was not possible.

Political party lawyers watching how their candidates are faring. (Photo by Jose Hernani / Davao Today / bulatlat.com)

The canvass report presented by the board of canvassers before the adjournment showed Sara Duterte enjoying a lead of 228,240 over her opponent House Speaker Prospero Nograles’ 160, 225 votes. Duterte garnered 388,465 as of May 11 closing time. Incumbent mayor Rodrigo Duterte garnered 440,030 votes as compared to the 105, 962 that his vice-mayoralty opponent Benjamin De Guzman got.

It was however a neck to neck fight in the congressional race for the first district. Karlo Nograles, who runs for the first district in Davao City, maintained a lead of only 8,000 votes over Mabel Acosta. As of 11 pm of May 11, Nograles got 99,586 votes over Acosta’s 91, 414 votes.

In the Davao City second district, Mylene Garcia posted an early lead of 19, 262 over congressional bets Diosdado Mahipus and Danilo Dayanghirang who got 42, 625 and 41, 638 votes respectively. Garcia garnered a total votes of 61, 887 as of canvassing time.

In the Davao City third district, Isidro Ungab was ahead of his opponents by 21, 209 votes. Ungab garnered 65,029 votes against Ruy Elias Lopez III’s 43, 828 votes.

People had expected fast tabulation of results from the country’s first automated elections but with the glitches they experienced, some of them preferred to revert back to the manual system. (Bulatlat.com)