BILANG PILIPINO | Comelec nears resolving Marcos’ cancellation case, orders parties to submit memo

December 16, 2021 , 05:31 PM

By Clarist Zablan

(December 16, 2021) – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday said it will soon resolve the first petition seeking to cancel the presidential candidacy of the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, ordering all parties to submit their respective memoranda.

In a five-page order signed by presiding commissioner Socorro Inting, the Comelec second division gave respondent Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr and the petitioners five days after receiving the order to submit their memoranda, as the poll body will decide on the petition afterwards.

“The Commission (Second Division) holds that no more further proceedings are to be taken in this case,” the division said in the order.“The parties are hereby given five (5) days to submit their respective Memoranda from receipt of this Order. Thereafter, the case is deemed submitted for resolution after the lapse of the given period with or without the parties’ Memoranda.”

Seeking to speed up the case, the Comelec has dismissed the motion of the petitioners to subpoena documents from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the regional court proving Marcos’ tax evasion conviction. It has also junked the motion of the Marcos camp to hold a face-to-face argument.

The poll body explained the preliminary conference for the proceeding of the petition has already concluded, and finds that looking for more evidence and clarification on the pleadings and evidence submitted will just unnecessarily delay the case.

“After a careful evaluation of the pleadings and pieces of evidence submitted by both parties, the Commission (Second Division) finds that setting the case for clarificatory hearing and the addition of more evidence, including the subject of the subpoena prayed for by the petitioners, are no longer necessary in the resolution of the case,” Comelec said.

Groups representing political detainees, human rights, and medical organizations last month filed the first case seeking to cancel Marcos’ certificate of candidacy (COC). The groups argued that the claims made by Marcos in the document that he is eligible to be a candidate, despite being convicted in 1995 for failure to file his income tax returns from 1982 to 1985.

Marcos is also facing one more cancellation petition, another petition to declare him as a nuisance candidate, and four petitions seeking to disqualify his candidacy.

These cases were largely filed by human rights advocates, as well as survivors and families of victims of Martial Law under his father’s presidency, a decade-long period marred by records of human rights violations and corruption.

Marcos’ camp has shrugged these cases off as merely nuisance petitions.

(MM)

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