Petitioners asks Comelec to reverse dismissal of plea to cancel Marcos COC
MANILA, Philippines — Petitioners urging the Commission on Elections to cancel presidential aspirant Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s Certificate of Candidacy on Monday appealed the dismissal of their petition.
Civic leaders represented by lawyer Theodore Te filed their motion for partial reconsideration before the Comelec Second Division that dismissed their petition to deny due course or cancel Marcos’ COC.
In their motion, however, the petitioners called on the Commission En Banc to reverse the Second Division's resolution and grant their plea to cancel Marcos's COC.
“As a consequence of the above, also excluding the name of respondent Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. from the list of official candidates for President in the official ballot for the May 2022 elections,” the motion read.
The petitioners also prayed for the mandatory inhibition of the members of the Comelec’s Second Division and asked the Commission En Banc to look into “circumstances behind the use of the intemperate and improper language by the Second Division.”
Perpetual disqualification
Central to the petition is Marcos’ conviction for failure to file his Income Tax Returns from 1982 to 1985. The petitioners pointed out that Marcos declared under oath that he has never been found liable for any offense, which carries the accessory penalty of perpetual disqualification to hold public office. This was when he ticked the NO box on the COC he filed.
In dismissing their petition, the Comelec division held that the Court of Appeals was “correct for not imposing on herein Respondent the penalty of perpetual disqualification from holding any public office, voting, participating in any election.”
“Since Respondent was not meted the accessory penalty of perpetual disqualification from public office, it cannot be rightfully said that he committed a false misrepresentation when he answered in the negative to the question in Item No. 22 of his COC. In like manner, when Respondent declared in Item No. 11 of his COC that he is eligible for the office for which he seeks to be elected to, he was essentially speaking the truth,” the Comelec resolution read.
But the petitioners pointed out that “[t]he finality of respondent Marcos Jr.’s conviction is a fact, and the judgment of conviction and its consequences are immutable and can no longer be modified, let alone denied.”
They argued that the conviction for violation of the National Internal Revenue Code “automatically brought about the consequences provided therein—that he was ‘perpetually dismissed from holding any public office, to vote and to participate in any election.’”
“This is a consequence deemed written into the conviction of respondent Marcos Jr. by law as decided by the Court of Appeals, which the Comelec is mandated to enforce, not deny or dispute, split hairs or spin,” they added.
The petitioners also insisted that the CA “did not have to” explicitly write the penalty of perpetual disqualification, citing Section 286 of the NIRC that the penalty is imposed in cases of conviction on crimes penalized by the NIRC.
On whether Marcos was still a public officer on the filing of ITR on March 18, 1986 — when Presidential Decree 1994 which imposed perpetual disqualification as penalty — “whether upon his departure or upon the last day for the filing of his tax return,”’ they added.
Marcos deliberately tried to mislead the electorate
The petitioners also questioned part of the Comelec’s resolution that states that Marcos cannot be said to have deliberately misled which would render him ineligible “because he had no basis at all to answer in the affirmative.”
They stressed that the basis of the answer to the question of whether he has been found liable for an offense penalized with perpetual disqualification lies in the fact of his conviction.
“Similarly, respondent Marcos, Jr.'s reliance on the CA Decision - which supposedly does not expressly state the imposition of perpetual disqualification as a consequence of his criminal conviction - does not excuse his patent and false representation in his Certificate of Candidacy,” they added.
‘Adversarial tone’
The petitioners said the Comelec division “gratuitously alludes to wrongdoing on the part of petitioners (and implicitly their counsel) without proof nor proper proceedings and then stops short of taking express action on their gratuitous allegations.”
The effect was “to demonize” them and their counsels without the opportunity for them to controvert the allegations.
“The tone, references, and the gratuitous accusations against petitioners and their counsel by the Second Division in its Questioned Resolution certainly go beyond the pale of sober and impartial adjudication and partake of partisan collaboration that is utterly destructive of due process,” their motion read.
Part of the questioned resolution stated that the petitioners “deliberately cited an inapplicable provision of law in order to mislead the Commission.”
The petitioners said that considering that the Division resolution is to be reviewed also for grave abuse of discretion amounting to manifest bias, it is proper for members of the Second Division to “be mandatorily inhibited from participating in its review.”
This is the lone petition to cancel COC that Marcos is facing. He is however still facing disqualification suits, citing the same tax conviction, pending before the First and Second Division of Comelec.
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