Court on Vergara case: Suffrage can’t be sacrificed

CABANATUAN CITY—A regional trial court (RTC) on Friday reversed a municipal court order to strip a Nueva Ecija congressional candidate of her right to vote, saying suffrage cannot be sacrificed because of a technicality.

Judge Primo Sio Jr., of the Cabanatuan RTC Branch 23, directed the city’s election registration board (ERB) “to maintain in its active files” the voter’s registration of Rosanna (not Rossana as earlier reported) Vergara, a candidate for the third congressional district.

“Suffrage, long cherished and endeared by citizens in a democratic society to choose their own leaders, cannot be made a living sacrifice in the altar of technicality and procedural rules,” said Sio’s 15-page decision issued on Feb. 19.

“No motion for reconsideration shall be entertained,” said Sio, who addressed Vergara’s appeal on the nullification of her voting rights by Executive Judge Kelly Belino of the Municipal Trial Court in Cities.

Belino ordered the Commission on Elections to remove Vergara from the voter’s list, after concluding that she became an American citizen in 1998 before she acquired dual citizenship in 2006.

She also said Vergara registered twice in 1997 and in 2003.

But the RTC found merit in Vergara’s argument that “the MTCC exhibited the laxity of a layman in its use and application of the word ‘registration.’”

It said Vergara’s 2003 registration was not a new exercise but was mandated by the Comelec when it required voters to submit their biometric information.

It also said undue fuss over a second voter’s registration was “water under the bridge.”

Sio said this matter “losses relevance and importance” when Vergara reacquired Filipino citizenship and renounced her American citizenship.
Vergara, wife of Cabanatuan Mayor Julius Cesar Vergara, is listed as voter at Precinct No. 0078-A in Barangay Rizdelis here. She is running against outgoing Nueva Ecija Gov. Aurelio Umali.