Lawmaker seeks to do away with poll recall option

Palawan Rep. Dennis Socrates. Photo from congress.gov.ph

A lawmaker has filed a bill scrapping  the recall mechanism provided for under election rules, arguing that it has been capriciously employed by the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

Palawan Representative Dennis Socrates filed  House Bill No. 6222 abolishing the recall mechanism in the Local Government Code and repealing for the same purpose Sections 69 to 75 of Republic Act No. 7160.

In a privilege speech on Monday, Socrates cited Comelec Resolution No. 9374 issued in March “to discontinue actions”  on  all petitions for the conduct of 38 recall elections in various local government units all over the country due to time and budgetary constraints.

Socrates said Congress should also do away with the recall provision since this Comelec ruling itself was a virtual  call to abolish the recall mechanism.

Socrates said the Comelec ruling showed that the recall mechansim was “vulnerable to the human or subjective dispositions of the Comelec commissioners.”

“Compliance with the requirements of the law—very onerous already as they are—does not guarantee that a recall election will be conducted. The law is open to ‘discriminatory enforcement’ or does not conform to the idea that ‘ours is a government of laws, not of men’; nor does it speak well of the stability of our legal system,” said Socrates.

Under the rules, the Comelec is mandated to hold a mandatory election after receiving a signed petition of 10 percent to 25 percent of the voting population within a year after the questioned official’s assumption to office and before the start of his third year in office.

Socrates explained that while the Constitution requires the adoption of a provision for recall elections,  it does not envision the  “discriminatory enforcement”  of what should be a stable, predictable and objective right of losing candidates.

“The present mechanism of recall has proven to be ineffective—and, perhaps, even inimical to the common good, considering the trouble everyone has to go through for nothing—and, therefore, should be abolished until such time, we do not know when, as our collective wisdom could conceive of a truly effective mechanism of recall,” Socrates said.

Among the  petitions affected by the Comelec resolution is the recall petition filed by a Palawan resident, Ceasar Ventura, against Palawan Governor Abraham Mitra in September which garnered 158,889 signatures, or more than three times the minimum required. Socrates, who was also the subject of a recall election when he was Puerto Princesa mayor in 2002,  said he was disheartened by the Comelec’s action.