In Lanao del Norte COC, Team PNoy leads

MANILA, Philippines – The last of the official Certificates of Canvass (COCs) from among the 80 Philippine provinces arrived Saturday night, May 18.

Based on the official COC of Lanao del Norte in Northern Mindanao, voters of the province preferred senatorial bets from the Team PNoy coalition over its rival United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).

Only 4 candidates from UNA entered the province’s top 12 senatorial preferences, including the bottom 2.

UNA’s Nancy Binay, Miguel Zubiri, JV Ejercito, and Jack Enrile were in 5th, 7th, 11th and 12th place respectively.

Zubiri, who comes from neighboring province Bukidnon, failed to land in the top spot.

Peaceful elections

Provincial election supervisor Atty Joseph Hamilton Cuevas said that the conduct of elections in Lanao del Norte was relatively peaceful, citing the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) for their efforts.

“Big credit goes to AFP and PNP for the security set-up. Yung ine-expect naming areas na magulo, eh okay naman (The areas we expected to be hot spots turned out to be okay),” he said in a phone interview.

According to Cuevas, failure of elections was declared in only 5 out of the 506 barangays in the province for 2013. This is a great improvement from what was previously a failure of elections in one whole municipality.

The 5 barangays that were unaccounted for all came from the town of Tangcal.

“Due to intense political rivalry yung nangyari diyan sa Tangcal. Pero at least ngayon na-contain natin into 5 barangays,” added Cuevas. (What happened in the town of Tangcal was due to intense political rivalry. At least now, we were able to limit it to 5 barangays.)

Gubernatorial race

Based on unofficial results as of 6:46 pm of Saturday, May 18, Mohamad Khalid Quieranza Dimaporo of the Nationalist People’s Coalition led the gubernatorial race with 73,047 votes.

Dimaparo bested 3 other candidates, with a margin of 23,595 votes over the next-ranking bet Casan Macode Maquiling of the Liberal Party.

READ: Official vs unofficial count: Which is which?

Lanao del Norte has 788 clustered precincts which covered a little less than 500,000 registered voters. – Rappler.com