SC cites Comelec for contempt over Guardians’ delisting

BAGUIO CITY—The Supreme Court slapped the Commission on Elections (Comelec) with a “severe reprimand” after finding it guilty of contempt for disobeying its Feb. 2, 2010 order declaring a status quo in the list of participating party-list candidates in last year’s national elections.

The status quo order would have required the Comelec to retain the Philippine Guardians Brotherhood Inc. (PGBI), which had petitioned the court to recognize its qualifications for the 2013 elections.

The tribunal ruled it may not yet acknowledge PGBI as “fully qualified to run under the party-list system in the coming 2013 party-list elections [because the issue] is not ripe for judicial determination.”

<strong>Guardians should have run</strong>

But the court confirmed in its March 22 resolution that PGBI should have run in the 2010 elections, and concluded that it “shall be deemed not to have transgressed the participation and level of vote requirements under Section 6(8) of Republic Act 7941 (the law guiding the party-list elections) with respect to the May 10, 2010 elections.”

This means that Comelec may not reject PGBI for failing to participate in the last two successive elections or for failing to obtain at least 2 percent of the votes cast during those two previous polls.

The resolution, written by Associate Justice Arturo Brion, was made available here by the court, which has convened for its annual summer sessions.

Associate Justices Roberto Abad, Presbitero Velasco Jr., Jose Perez and Maria Lourdes Sereno voted against the ruling.

In his dissenting opinion, Abad said “the facts do not warrant such condemnation,” saying Comelec could not have restored PGBI in the list of candidates “without seriously setting back its preparations for the electronic elections and incurring huge costs.”

The court’s resolution affects the composition of the poll body that undertook the 2010 elections.

The Comelec, which was then chaired by retired Justice Jose Melo, “pleaded insurmountable and tremendous operational constraints and costs implications” to explain why it disobeyed the high court, the resolution said.

<strong>Unacceptable explanation</strong>

“We find this explanation unacceptable, given the Comelec’s own self-imposed deadline of Feb. 4, 2010, for the correction of errors and omissions, prior to printing, of the published list of participating party-list groups and organizations in the May 10, 2010, elections,” it said.

The high court said the deadline imposed by the previous Comelec commissioners was also meant as a signal for courts hearing the disputed list of candidates to resolve these issues before Feb. 4.

“In an exercise as important as an election, the Comelec cannot make a declaration and impose a deadline, and thereafter, expect everyone to accept its excuses when it backtracks on its announced declaration. The Comelec knew very well that there are still cases pending for judicial determination that could have been decided before the deadline was set,” the high court’s resolution said.

“We stress that automation is not the end-all and be-all of an electoral process. An equally important aspect of a democratic electoral exercise is the right of free choice of the electorate on who shall govern them… Wittingly or unwittingly, the Comelec took this freedom of choice away and effectively disenfranchised the members of the sector that PGBI sought to represent,” it said.

The resolution said the court settled for a severe reprimand of Comelec, instead of imprisonment and fines mandated by existing statues, after voting to recognize “its excuse [for disobeying the status quo order] as a mitigating factor.”