The campaign period hasn’t officially started yet, but the political scene is already awash with drama that could rival any Korean telenovela.
Presidential aspirant Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, even after his tearful announcement, has yet to formally file his withdrawal papers, saying that he would do it “at the right time.” His ambivalence has spawned speculations up and down the political grapevine that he could still do a turnaround. There are those who say that Go’s withdrawal depends on the outcome of the disqualification case filed against presidential aspirant Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. before the Commission on Elections. According to Comelec Spokesperson James Jimenez, Go has until election day, May 9, 2022, to finalize his decision.
Suspicions about Go’s seeming foot-dragging to file his withdrawal are bolstered by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s earlier tirades against the dictator’s son and his unwillingness to backtrack or soften his attacks. Political pundits are convinced that Duterte was miffed by his daughter Sara Duterte Carpio’s acceptance of becoming Bongbong’s vice, despite what Duterte and his supporters’ claimed as Sara’s “unassailable” lead in earlier presidential surveys. The Marcos family, according to Imee Marcos, is deeply hurt, but still hopes that the President will eventually support her brother and not only his daughter in the 2022 elections.
In the eventuality that the dictator’s son will be defeated in the Comelec case, it is bruited about by political insiders that Sara will then run for president with Bong Go as her vice.
Political pundits are sensing intense lobbying and horse-trading at the Comelec. in the face of extreme pressure from civil society groups to immediately nullify Bongbong’s certificate of candidacy and totally disqualify him from the race, his high-caliber legal team, led by Estelito Mendoza, is pulling out all the stops to ensure his Comelec victory.
The big question mark is, as advanced by some people, if the President’s camp is lending its support to these groups. A Palace insider whom BusinessWise called to verify such insinuations issued a flat denial. The Palace source who requested anonymity said that “the President respects the independence of the Comelec and expresses hope that this episode would be over soon, for the sake of the electorate.”
But is Bongbong really guilty of moral turpitude? This question is at the heart of the five petitions before the Comelec, which are aimed at cancelling his certificate of candidacy to prevent him from his presidential bid in next year’s elections. Two of the petitions asked the Comelec to cancel Bongbong’s candidacy papers, while another wanted him declared a nuisance candidate. A fourth petition that sought for his disqualification was filed by a group of victims of human-rights violations during the martial law era of Bongbong’s late dictator father Ferdinand Sr., citing a 1995 case in which the younger Marcos was convicted for failing to file income tax returns from 1982 to 1985.
The fifth petition sought to disqualify him, saying his conviction for tax evasion prohibits him from holding public office. Up to this day, Bongbong has not paid any tax deficiency and surcharges, making him ineligible to hold any public office, according to the petitioners led by human-rights lawyer and University of the Philippines assistant professor Theodore Te. The petitioners were Father Christian Buenafe of the Task Force Detainees; Fides Lim of prison group Kapatid, whose husband Vicente Ladlad is a martial law victim; Ma Edeliza Hernandez of the Medical Action Group; Celia Lagman Sevilla of the Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance; Roland Vibal of the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights; and Josephine Lascano of the Balay Rehabilitation Center.
In a recent public statement, the petitioners said, “Marcos falsified his certificate of candidacy when he claimed that he was eligible to be a candidate for president of the Philippines in the 2022 national elections when in fact he is disqualified from doing so.” Because he was plainly a convicted criminal, the petitioners explained, Marcos Jr. is not eligible to run for any public office.
Bongbong’s lead lawyer countered the allegation, saying that “the petitions to cancel [Bongbong’s] COC or disqualify him did not have specific allegation of false material representation.” His client, Mendoza asserted, is qualified to become president, as the Court of Appeals did not convict him of moral turpitude and the Comelec had actually allowed him to run for senator in 1995 and vice president in 2016.
Petitioners claim that Bongbong has “no record” of compliance of payment with regard to the 1997 Court of Appeals decision on his tax case. Te cited documents from Quezon City Regional Trial Court that showed that Bongbong “was ordered by the appellate court to pay a fine of P2,000 for each count of the non-filing of income tax returns for the years 1982, 1983, and 1984, as well as a P30,000 fine for 1985 “with surcharges.” The dictator’s son, Te added, was also tasked to pay the Bureau of Internal Revenue the deficiency income taxes due with interest.
In a series of articles published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, retired Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban declared that Bongbong’s COC should be cancelled. He pointed out that a candidate may be disqualified only if he committed election offenses under the Omnibus Election Code. He said that the dictator’s son’s COC must be cancelled instead. “Disqualification, unlike cancellation of COCs, allows substitution by another candidate from the same political party bearing the same surname,” Panganiban expounded. “If the COC of Bongbong is canceled or denied due course, he cannot be substituted because such cancellation or denial legally means that the COC never existed. Thus, Bongbong’s votes will not be counted. The candidate getting the highest number of votes, excluding his votes, would be declared winner.”
The retired chief justice urged the Commission’s second division to resolve the petition against Marcos Jr. immediately since the ruling will likely be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. He summarized the grounds raised in the 52-page petition filed by Te’s group, thus: “It argued that Bongbong’s CoC should be canceled because he falsely declared under oath in paragraph 11 of his COC dated October 6, 2021, that he was “eligible for the office I seek to be elected to.”
This material declaration or representation is “false” because he was convicted by a final judgment, dated October 31, 1997, of the Court of Appeals (CA) for violating Section 45 of the Tax Code, “(a) Ordering (him) to pay the BIR the deficiency taxes due with interest at the legal rate until fully paid; and (b)…to pay a fine of P2,000 for each charge in Criminal Cases Nos… for failure to file income tax returns for the years 1982, 1983 and 1984; and the fine of P30,000 in Criminal Case No…for failure to file income tax return for 1985, with surcharges.” This judgment made him ineligible to hold any public office.
In a nutshell, Panganiban noted, if the petitioners “can show that Bongbong’s conviction by the CA involves moral turpitude and that the five-year prescriptive period does not embrace moral turpitude, or his alleged payment is false, inadequate, or ill-timed, his COC should be canceled.”
Despite the historical revisionism that the Marcos family has been peddling for many years now, there is no question that Martial Law victims and those who oppose the return of the Marcoses to Malacañang are the clear beneficiaries if Bongbong loses his Comelec case. There is also no denying that die-hard Duterte supporters who are bent on pushing for the Sara presidency would gleefully accept such an outcome.
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