Philippine Constitution Association president Martin Romualdez is confident he will reclaim his post as representative of Leyte’s first district after receiving a high number of votes in the congressional race.
Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte Carpio, chairman of the regional party Hugpong ng Pagbabago, has endorsed Romualdez as Speaker of the incoming 18th Congress.
As of 1:53 p.m. on Tuesday, Romualdez, a three-term Leyte congressman, had received 157,382 votes against Lino Dumas’ 9,621 based on the partial and unofficial results from the aggregated Commission on Elections’ data comprising 499 election returns.
Romualdez, president of the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats and former head of the House Independent Bloc of the 16th Congress, thanked his supporters for believing in his ability to continue his public-service-with-a-heart advocacies.
“From the bottom of my heart, thank you to all the support and votes given to me in the last election,” said Romualdez, husband of Leyte First District Rep. Yedda Marie M. Kittilstvedt-Romualdez, the first nominee of the Tingog Sinirangan Party-list group.
According to the partial and unofficial results from the aggregated Comelec data as of 2:50 p.m. on Tuesday, Tingog Sinirangan ranked 18th with 381,249 votes and was expected to get one seat.