The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has stopped former Pasig City Mayor Maribel Andaya-Eusebio from running for representative of Camarines Sur’s second district after the poll body determined that she is ineligible to vie for the position because she is not a registered voter in that province.
In a unanimous resolution, the Comelec’s first division cancelled Andaya-Eusebio’s certificate of candidacy for committing “false material representation” when she claimed last year in her COC that she was eligible to run for a congressional post in Camarines Sur, even though she was not a registered voter in the municipality of the province’s second congressional district where she intends to get elected in the midterm polls.
Andaya-Eusebio’s ineligibility to run for the post warrants the cancellation of her COC, the Comelec ruled in a resolution signed by the first division’s presiding Commissioner Al Parreño and Commissioners Rowena Amelia Guanzon and Marlon Casquejo.
These commissioners said in their eight-page resolution that with the denial of Andaya-Eusebio’s bid to have her voter’s registration record transferred from Pasig City to Barangay Puro Batia in Camarines Sur, “it becomes clear that [she] lacks one of the qualifications to vie for the position of member, House of Representatives of the Second District of Camarines Sur, that is being a registered voter in the district in which she shall be elected.”
The Comelec division’s unanimous move to cancel Andaya-Eusebio’s COC was made on the strength of last year’s December 20 resolution by the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Libmanan, which, in turn, upheld the October 29 ruling of the Election Registration Board (ERB) to deny her appeal to be included in the Comelec’s list of voters of Barangay Puro Batia in the municipality of Libmanan.
The Comelec said the denial by the Libmanan RTC of Andaya-Eusebio’s appeal to have her name included in the list of voters of Barangay Puro Batia is “final and executory,” given that no higher court had issued any ruling stopping the enforcement of its decision.
“For to rule otherwise would create a contemptible scenario where a candidate who is not even a registered voter of the district he is supposed to represent may come out victorious in the elections, making a mockery of our election laws and rules,” the Comelec said.
Andaya-Eusebio is the sister of Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. and was once mayor of Pasig City, where her husband Roberto Eusebio is the incumbent mayor seeking reelection in the May polls.
The Libmanan RTC’s ruling merely affirmed the earlier resolution issued by the Comelec’s ERB rejecting Andaya-Eusebio’s request to have her voter’s registration record transferred from Pasig City to Barangay Puro Batia, after it found out that she failed to satisfy the residency requirements mandated under the law.
In its resolution, the Comelec cited the decision of the Supreme Court in Hayudini vs Comelec, which states: “A candidate is eligible if he has a right to run for the public office. If a candidate is not actually eligible because he is not a registered voter in the municipality where he intended to be elected but still states under oath in his certificate of candidacy that he is eligible to run for public office, then the candidate clearly makes a false material representation…”
The Comelec said this was clearly the case with Andaya-Eusebio.