Nuisance candidates: Gatchalian bill won’t help. For now it’s up to Comelec

SEN. SHERWIN GATCHALIAN is vexed by the large number of people who filed certificates of candidacy (COCs) for senator in the 2019 elections. When Comelec closed the period for filing Wednesday (Oct. 17), 152 COCs for 12 seats in the Senate had been accepted and recorded. It’s not an unusually large number though, even fewer than the 174 who filed for the 2016 Senate elections. Tamer fantasies Actually, the fantasies spun by this year’s crop could be a lot tamer than in previous years, which included one who said he’d give a million pesos to each voter and another who said Jesus Christ talked to him at Magellan’s Cross in front of City Hall and told him to run to save the country.

They must not be the sort of candidates who burden the government with more expense and Comelec more work. It’s annoying to people like Gatchalian. The senator filed last July 28, 2016 (and probably re-filed in 2017 and this year) Senate Bill 911 which amends the nuisance law and imposes a fine of P50,000 on each filer found by Comelec to be a nuisance filer.

Amendment Gatchalian’s bill also amends the Omnibus Election Code (Batas Pambansa 881, section 69) by including in the list of punishable acts the use of COC filing “to obtain money, profit or other consideration.”

The other acts deemed offensive have long been there: (a) “to put the election process in mockery or dispute,” (2) “to cause confusion among voters by similarity of names,” or (2) any other act that shows the filer has no “bona fide intent” to run for office. Determining intent

Being a nut case may give away the filer’s lack of genuine intent to run. But how would Gatchalian

Maricar P. Manuel