Bealeagured Marinduque solon appeals to SC justice

I’M A FILIPINO Marinduque Rep. Regina Reyes shows to media documents as proof she is a Filipino citizen and that she should not have been disqualified by the Commission on Elections. TETCH TORRES-TUPAS/INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines—Beleaguered Marinduque Representative Reginal Ongsiako-Reyes on Thursday called on an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to stop using his position “to give life to a constitutional crisis.”

Reyes was recently unseated by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) as representative of the lone district of Marinduque. The Comelec ruling came after the high court affirmed Comelec’s earlier ruling disqualifying her to run for office for being allegedly a US citizen. With the ruling, Lord Allan Jay Velasco will assume the congressional seat in Marinduque.

“I beseech [Associate Justice] Presbitero Velasco to stop using his post to further the interest of his family. I call on him to refrain from using his unelected post to give life to another constitutional crisis,” Reyes said in a press conference.

Reyes said she has been proclaimed as the winner in the 2013 elections and with her proclamation, her case falls under the sole jurisdiction of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal.

“Only HRET can be the sole judge of all controversies involving the election of all members of Congress. This is what the Philippine Constitution, our laws and our jurisprudence provide,” Reyes said.

She added that “apparently, my election has become the lone exception to the rule. It is very clear that jurisprudence cannot be opened unless there are changed circumstances and yet apparently, Comelec and the Supreme Court have rewritten jurisprudence when they effectively ruled that the son of Justice Velasco should sit as representative of Marinduque.”

Reyes noted the dissenting opinion of Associate Justice Arturo Brion who handed a stinging rebuke to his colleagues when they voted to dismiss the petition of Reyes.

Brion, who was joined in by Associate Justices Antonio Carpio, Martin Villarama and Marvic Leonen in his dissent called the ruling “unusual” and “hasty.”

“[U]nless the case is clearly and patently shown to be without basis and out of our sense of delicadeza (which we should have), the court should at least hear and consider both sides before making a ruling that would favor the son of a member of the court,” Brion said.

“If this court is indeed serious in administering justice or at least to be seen to be administering justice in the way described in the speeches of many a justice of this court, it should not deliver the kind of hasty and imprudent action that it did in this case. The proper course of action, if the court indeed honestly wants to achieve this objective in the present case, is to require the Comelec to comment on the petition and to decide matters from that point,” he added.

Brion said the outright dismissal of Reyes’ petition left the losing candidate, Lord Allan Jay Velasco of the National Unity Party, as the “indirect beneficiary” because he would then be proclaimed the real winner upon Reyes’ disqualification. Had the case reached the court via the HRET, Reyes’ disqualification, if upheld, would have left the congressional seat vacant and new elections would have to be held.

Brion added that the ruling of the high court “is a major retrogressive jurisprudential development that can emasculate the HRET.”

INQUIRER.net made a request from the Supreme Court’s Information Office for Justice Velasco to issue a statement on the matter but the information office said they have already sent a word but still no advise from Justice Velasco’s office.

Velasco, together with Associate Justices Jose Mendoza and Estela Perlas-Bernabe, inhibited themselves from the case.