Revisiting Poe and strengthening the jurisdiction of the Comelec

AS we approach the final stage of our 2019 elections, let me bring to the electorate’s attention a development – courtesy of the Supreme Court’s Francisco v. Comelec (G.R. No. 230249, April 24, 2018) ruling – on the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) preelection adjudicatory authority that the court’s previous ruling in the PoeLlamanzares v. Comelec case (Poe) rendered murky and uncertain.

In 2016, the Comelec ordered Poe’s certificate of candidacy (CoC) cancelled pursuant to Section 78 of the Omnibus Election Code (OEC) for misrepresentations in her citizenship and residency qualifications.

The citizenship question arose because Poe is indisputably a foundling who could not then point to her Filipino parentage. At the time of her birth, no law – constitutional or statutory – existed granting a foundling Philippine citizenship.

Her residency, on the other hand, was questioned because of her own officiallyfiled declaration in the 2013 senatorial elections which left her with less than the required residency period to qualify for the presidency.

Poe brought the Comelec ruling to the Supreme Court on a Rule 64/65 petition for certiorari premised on the Comelec’s lack of legal authority to disqualify her before the elections.

She argued that under the OEC, a disqualification proceeding can be brought before elections only if based on a final court decision of guilt of a disqualifying act, or a Comelec ruling finding her suffering from a disqualification under the law or the Constitution. She claimed that the proper tribunal for her disqualification is the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) which assumes jurisdiction only after a winning candidate has been proclaimed (in other words, after the elections).

The court found, on a divided 9-to-6 vote, the petition meritorious and nullified the Comelec’s decision for lack of jurisdiction. It confirmed – in a departure from established precedents – that the Comelec overstepped jurisdictional boundaries: it did not have the legal authority to rule on Poe’s qualifications before the elections in the absence of any disqualifying cause

established under a court or Comelec final ruling (a Section 68 issue) , and could not thus cancel Poe’s CoC (a Section 78-based ruling).

Inexplicably, the court – instead of ruling only on the presented jurisdictional issue and nullifying the Comelec decision on this ground – likewise passed upon the merits of the citizenship and residency questions and allowed Poe to run for president.

This unusual turn prompted one dissenter to ask – if the Comelec did not have jurisdiction and its ruling was void, did the court have to review and rule on Poe’s citizenship and residency qualifications – matters outside the court’s original and certiorari jurisdictions and that, according to Poe, belong to the PET?

Francisco – which came two years after Poe – was a disqualification case brought under Section 68 of the OEC to disqualify Francisco’s opponent during the 2013 elections. In its ruling, the court significantly quoted the disputed Comelec ruling that referred to Poe, as follows: “[Poe] has effectively emasculated the Commission’s power under Comelec Resolution No. 9523 to disqualify a candidate.”

The Comelec went on to say that it still followed Poe as it cannot decline to apply such ruling in view of the principle that “judicial decisions applying or interpreting the laws or the Constitution shall form a part of the legal system of the Philippines.”

The court responded in Francisco to these references to Poe with the ruling that:

“Considering the historical evolution of the Comelec, the court now declares that the polling body has full adjudicatory powers to resolve election contests outside the jurisdiction of the electoral tribunals. To rule otherwise would be an act of regression, contrary to the intent behind the constitutional innovations creating and further strengthening the Commission. There is no novelty in this pronouncement, but merely a reinstatement of our consistent jurisprudence prior to Poe.”

It went on to further state: ”Contrary to Poe, the court categorically rules herein that the Comelec can be the proper body to make the pronouncement against which the truth or falsity of a material representation in a COC can be measured,” thus, categorically rectifying its jurisdictional ruling in Poe.

The Francisco ponencia, understandably, did not allow its ruling to disturb the Court’s ruling on the merits of Poe, a case that was not then before it and whose ruling had long lapsed to finality.

Notably, too, while both Poe and Francisco were filed before the elections, they are not completely similar, either as to facts, cited grounds, or governing provisions.

Poe involved the cancellation of the candidate’s CoC for misrepresentation and is governed by Section 78 of the OEC, while Francisco was a disqualification case that, under the OEC’s Section 68, must be based on a cause for disqualification found in a court’s or the Comelec’s final ruling. From this perspective, Francisco thus appears to have wrongly targeted the Poe ruling as a means to justify its conclusions.

A close reading of Francisco, however, shows that what it sought to highlight – through its recital of the Comelec’s history – was the Comelec’s quasi-judicial authority to be the sole judge of all questions affecting elections, save only those that the Constitution has withheld from it.

Thus viewed, Francisco is founded on firm legal grounds in clarifying the Comelec’s authority to rule on Sections 68 and 78 pre-election petitions that require the exercise of quasijudicial functions. What Poe therefore disturbed and left unsettled, Francisco has now effectively restored.

As the ponencia in Francisco did, I shy away from any discussion of the merits of the citizenship and the residency questions in Poe, as the decision has long become final; the issues directly and properly ruled upon have ceased to exist as disputable points in the legal arena.

At this point, only the court can revisit the Poe rulings for their continued applicability, as the court has done in Francisco. If the citizenship and residency issues can still assume reality, it is only in our democratic political exercises where the people are directly involved and can, by themselves, decide through the ballot.