PJ residence: ‘Question of intent’

Anumber of the 78 disqualification cases filed before Comelec Manila against persons who filed COCs or certificates of candidacy for the 2019 elections involve the question of residence.

One notable case: that filed against former congressman Pablo John Garcia, who runs for congressman of Cebu’s third district.

PJ Garcia is a returnee to the district that he served in 2007 and 2010; he ran in 2016 in the seventh district but lost. The petitioner, one “Gilbert Pepito of Bonifacio St., Cebu City,” asks the Comelec to cancel PJ’s COC, submitting with his petition official certifications that declare (1) Garcia was still a registered voter in Dumanjug as of Oct. 18, 2018 and (2) he applied last July 28, 2018 for transfer of his voter’s registration from Dumanjug to Barili.

Counting the year

The lawsuit against Garcia apparently strikes at alleged lack of residence. The Local Government Code requires would-be House members to have at least one year residence in their district preceding the election day.

How is residence reckoned: from what day to May 13, 2019? What comes handily is the date of voter’s registration or date of its transfer. Thus, the complainant showed PJ Garcia’s request for transfer of voter’s registration.

But neither the application for transfer nor the COC can be conclusive evidence of residence. They are part of the overt acts to prove intent but they cannot stand alone.

Personal presence

The Supreme Court (in Rommel Jalosjos vs. Comelec and Dan Erasmo Sr., GR #191970 of 2012) says that for election purposes residence is synonymous with domicile, which requires intent to reside in a place plus personal presence. Residence is a question of intent, the SC declares. And the court looks at circumstances of each case.

Elements of domicile

The court doesn’t always find out the truth. There were cases when the candidate alleging residence in the election locality actually spends a lot more time elsewhere.

But here’s the thing: It is tricky to determine intent to stay and intent to return, the two essential elements of domicile.

In the Jalosjos case, the court set basic guidelines: (a) every person has a domicile somewhere; (2) when one is established, the domicile remains until he acquires a new one; (3) a person can only have one domicile at a time.

Residence obviously is counted from the time the candidate starts showing his intent to make a locality his new domicile. More persuasive than voter’s registration or COC are overt acts that establish actual presence in one town or city.

Where he erred

That’s where petitioner “Gilbert Pepito” may have erred. Even before filing his application for change of voter’s registration, PJ may have already actually moved to his new domicile.

Actual presence in the locality that a candidate seeks to serve is the reason for the residence rule: to shut out “strangers or newcomers unacquainted with the conditions and needs” of the community.

Yet how many politicians merely keep a rest/resort house or a bed & breakfast bungalow or a condo unit in their supposed domicile? They spend more time at the actual residence, in some posh home in the city or elsewhere.

But that’s how it has been. Questioning residence is a strategy mostly to annoy but sometimes it works and disables or takes out the enemy.