POPULAR VOTE CANNOT CURE THE INELIGIBILITY OF A CANDIDATE.

Part 4.

POPULAR VOTE CANNOT CURE THE INELIGIBILITY OF A CANDIDATE. -

In the case of CASAN MACODE MAQUILING VS. COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS, ET. AL., G.R. No. 195649, April 16, 2013, it was held that the POPULAR VOTE CANNOT CURE THE INELIGIBILITY OF A CANDIDATE.

The ballot cannot override the constitutional and statutory requirements for qualifications and disqualifications of candidates. When the law requires certain qualifications to be possessed or that certain disqualifications be not possessed by persons desiring to serve as elective public officials, those qualifications must be met before one even becomes a candidate.

When a person who is not qualified is voted for and eventually garners the highest number of votes, even the will of the electorate expressed through the ballot cannot cure the defect in the qualifications of the candidate.

To rule otherwise is to trample upon and rent asunder the very law that sets forth the qualifications and disqualifications of candidates.

We might as well write off our election laws if the voice of the electorate is the sole determinant of who should be proclaimed worthy to occupy elective positions in our republic.

This has been, in fact, already laid down by the Court in Frivaldo v. COMELEC when the Court pronounced:

"x x x. The fact that he was elected by the people of Sorsogon does not excuse this patent violation of the salutary rule limiting public office and employment only to the citizens of this country. The qualifications prescribed for elective office cannot be erased by the electorate alone.

The will of the people as expressed through the ballot cannot cure the vice of ineligibility, especially if they mistakenly believed, as in this case, that the candidate was qualified. Obviously, this rule requires strict application when the deficiency is lack of citizenship. If a person seeks to serve in the Republic of the Philippines, he must owe his total loyalty to this country only, abjuring and renouncing all fealty and fidelity to any other state." (Emphasis supplied)

This issue has also been jurisprudentially clarified in Velasco v. COMELEC5, where the Court ruled that the ruling in Quizon and Saya-ang cannot be interpreted without qualifications lest "Election victory x x x becomes a magic formula to bypass election eligibility requirements."

The Court has ruled in the past that a candidate’s victory in the election may be considered a sufficient basis to rule in favor of the candidate sought to be disqualified if the main issue involves defects in the candidate’s certificate of candidacy. We said that while provisions relating to certificates of candidacy are mandatory in terms, it is an established rule of interpretation as regards election laws, that mandatory provisions requiring certain steps before elections will be construed as directory after the elections, to give effect to the will of the people. We so ruled in Quizon v. COMELEC and Saya-ang v. COMELEC:

The present case perhaps presents the proper time and opportunity to fine-tune our above ruling. We say this with the realization that a blanket and unqualified reading and application of this ruling can be fraught with dangerous significance for the rule of law and the integrity of our elections. For one, such blanket/unqualified reading may provide a way around the law that effectively negates election requirements aimed at providing the electorate with the basic information to make an informed choice about a candidate’s eligibility and fitness for office.

The first requirement that may fall when an unqualified reading is made is Section 39 of the LGC which specifies the basic qualifications of local government officials. Equally susceptive of being rendered toothless is Section 74 of the OEC that sets out what should be stated in a COC. Section 78 may likewise be emasculated as mere delay in the resolution of the petition to cancel or deny due course to a COC can render a Section 78 petition useless if a candidate with false COC data wins. To state the obvious, candidates may risk falsifying their COC qualifications if they know that an election victory will cure any defect that their COCs may have. Election victory then becomes a magic formula to bypass election eligibility requirements." (Citations omitted)

What will stop an otherwise disqualified individual from filing a seemingly valid COC, concealing any disqualification, and employing every strategy to delay any disqualification case filed against him so he can submit himself to the electorate and win, if winning the election will guarantee a disregard of constitutional and statutory provisions on qualifications and disqualifications of candidates?

It is imperative to safeguard the expression of the sovereign voice through the ballot by ensuring that its exercise respects the rule of law. To allow the sovereign voice spoken through the ballot to trump constitutional and statutory provisions on qualifications and disqualifications of candidates is not democracy or republicanism. It is electoral anarchy. When set rules are disregarded and only the electorate’s voice spoken through the ballot is made to matter in the end, it precisely serves as an open invitation for electoral anarchy to set in.

Source:

https://lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2013/apr2013/gr_195649_2013.html#rnt45