Tatad won’t quit, files 1 more plea
Former Senator Francisco Tatad AFP FILE PHOTO
HE’S STILL at it despite the Supreme Court’s final ruling on the disqualification cases filed against independent presidential candidate Sen. Grace Poe.
Former Sen. Francisco Tatad on Monday filed a second motion for reconsideration with the high court seeking to reverse its decision that allowed Poe to run for president amid questions on her citizenship and residency.
“[The court’s March 8 decision] will inflict such a great injury on the Constitution not only for this election but for as long as that error is not corrected. What’s at stake here are our children and the next generation,” Tatad told reporters.
Accompanied by his lawyer, Manuelito Luna, Tatad filed his 34-page motion for reconsideration in defiance of the court’s April 5 resolution stating that no further pleadings or motions will be entertained in connection with the Poe cases.
“[I]t is absolutely necessary that the [decision] be thoroughly and urgently revisited, in light of the unconscionable trespass and transgression of the Constitution and the basic standards of decency and fairness which the majority committed. No less than the survival of our republican and democratic state is at stake,” Tatad said in his motion.
In the motion, Tatad said the majority “ventured into forbidden grounds” by “consciously altering” the meaning of the provisions of the Constitution on the qualifications of the president, and of the Omnibus Election Code on the power of the Comelec to evaluate COCs.
Tatad also questioned why the court issued a one-and-a-half page resolution junking the first motion for reconsideration filed by the petitioners in the case.
The high court had junked the first motion for reconsideration of the decision filed by the Commission on Elections and by the four private petitioners who had sought Poe’s disqualification, namely, Tatad, former University of the East law dean Amado Valdez, lawyer Estrella Elamparo and political science professor Antonio Contreras.
