PPCRV hopes Abas appointment to improve polls in Mindanao

Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) chairman Rene Sarmiento is hopeful that newly appointed Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Sheriff Abas would be able to address the problems encountered in Mindanao during elections.

“It is good news,” Sarmiento said referring to President Duterte’s appointment of Abas to lead the Comelec (and) finish the unexpired term of Andres Bautista.

Since Abas is no newcomer to the poll body, he is familiar with the election scenario in the country and knows the importance of implementing electoral reforms, Sarmiento added.

Sarmiento hopes that Abas’ “warmth, his kind demeanor, his years in the Comelec as one of the commissioners, his being a brother Muslim (amid peace challenges facing Mindanao) will give the Commission a kind of sensitivity and energy needed for the introduction of electoral reforms for the marginalized and (the) vulnerable.”

Last Nov. 22, Duterte signed the appointment papers of Abas, who is a nephew of Moro Islamic Liberation Front negotiator Mohagher Iqbal.

Former president Benigno Aquino III appointed Abas as Comelec commissioner in 2015.

Bautista, in a letter to the Comelec last month, said it was the right time to step down following the postponement of the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.

The House committee on justice dismissed an impeachment case against Bautista, which his estranged wife Patricia Cruz filed early August.

“This was not an easy decision. But my family, especially my children, need me now more than ever,” Bautista wrote.

Comelec employees lauded Duterte’s appointment of an insider to lead the poll body.

“President Duterte made the right decision to name an insider who already knows how to run an election ….. We fully support the appointment of Commissioner Abas as chairman of the Comelec,” said Comelec Employees Union president Mac Ramirez.

He noted that “from the start, he (Abas) has been an ardent fighter and defender of employees rights and welfare as shown in his key role in the first collective negotiation agreement between the union and management signed last year.”

But Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said Abas could not assume office unless he is confirmed by the Commission on Appointments (CA).

“When the CA consents and he enters into the office of the chairman, he is deemed resigned from commissionership,” Jimenez added.