Arcilla, Andales expected to finish the race. But do voters see the risk?

The Oct. 23, 2018 news report said Allen Canoy of Bry. Apas, Cebu City filed a petition for disqualification with the Comelec against two candidates for city councilor, namely, Alvin Arcilla and Sisenio Andales, both of the local ruling party BOPK.

What the Comelec first division promulgated last March 11 and released last March 20 was a ruling only on the case of Arcilla. What happened to Andales’s case? It must have been a separate case in another division as the Comelec ruling [docketed, from what can be read, as SPA#016-059 (DC)] that the site “Undo Sugboanon” publishes is only about Arcilla.

But the facts and the legal issue involved are the same.

Arcilla and Andales were among 12 councilors, with then mayor Mike Rama and Vice Mayor Edgar Labella, who were ordered in April 2016 suspended for six months in connection with the P20,000 typhoon cash aid given to all City Hall officials and employees. (They started serving the suspension a week or so after the election, but only up to June 30, as they began their third term by July 1.)

Lawyers consulted

In reacting to Canoy’s complaint, Arcilla then said he had been consulting “several lawyers” who had gone through the case with him for a long time. Andales told reporters there is a Supreme Court ruling that said the three-year term limit is not interrupted if it is preventive suspension but, in their cases, he said, the suspension was based on a final judgment.

You tell the lawyer you hire which side you are on and he can find the law and the jurisprudence to support it.

That must partly explain why Arcilla and Andales pushed through with the filing of their COCs and have been campaigning since then. With their nine-year exposure to the electorate, the two councilors have better chances of winning than most of their colleagues and rivals.

They must know risk

It is improbable though that they didn’t know the risk of trying to scale a wall that the Supreme Court has been strengthening through the years. Previous attempts by candidates such as Arcilla and Andales mostly were litigated at the Comelec and ended up in the high tribunal.

Decided cases at the SC have been so numerous that the Comelec in the Arcilla ruling refers to it as the “traditional” rule: For stoppage of service to interrupt the term limit, there must be “loss of title or effective break from the office.”

In a Sept. 16, 2018 column (“Term limit bans Andales, Arcilla”), I wrote:

“What the SC ruled (in Aldovino Jr., et al, vs. Comelec and Asilo) as crucial is the nature of the interruption of service. Did the officials…continue to keep their positions? Was there absence of government replacement and lack of authority to appoint new officials?.. Andales and Arcilla didn’t lose their seats, they kept their title, no new councilors took over. They were just temporarily stopped from exercising their functions during the suspension.”

Canoy in the Arcilla case argued that “suspension whether preventive or imposed as a penalty cannot be considered an interruption.” Oddly, Andales saw it as penalty by final judgment while Arcilla referred to it as preventive suspension. Comelec said it must involve “involuntary loss of title.”

What’s ahead

Comelec “CANCELLED” (all caps are Comelec’s, not mine) the COC of Arcilla. The poll body still has to be heard from on the Andales case. Meanwhile, given its usual procedure, both councilors may continue with the race and expect the voters to still vote for them, hoping that the SC will uphold their claim.

In case of a shaky control over the next City Council, BOPK won’t be at peace with the probable loss of seats by Arcilla and Andales any time after they will have assumed office.

It could only be surmised now, without any doubt, that the President is anointing Sara, and nobody else, to succeed him when his term of office expires. Not only will he be free of lawsuits then, but he can rest assured that Sara will pursue and accomplish whatever programs and plans he has started for the country. This is what matters most to him.