The House of Representatives approved on Wednesday a bill seeking to disallow the withdrawal of the certificate of candidacy (CoC) as a ground for substituting candidates — a common practice in the Philippine elections.

House Bill 10524 hurdled its third and final reading after it was unanimously approved by lawmakers, garnering 195-0-0 votes.

The House-approved measure aims to amend Section 77 of Batas Pambansa Blg. 881 or the Omnibus Election Code of the Philippines, which allows the substitution of candidates belonging to, and certified by the same political party.

If passed into law, a substitution would only be authorized if a candidate who filed his or her CoC becomes permanently incapacitated.

This ensures that only those put in front of the public during the campaign season will be among those who will serve the public once elected.

“This is to prevent the mockery of the electoral system by abolishing withdrawal of certificate of candidacy as a ground for substitution of candidates by political parties that field candidates merely as placeholders just to comply with the electoral deadline of filing for candidacy,” the committee report on the measure read.

The bill defines permanent incapacity as a mental or physical impairment, or both, based on a verified medical report of a licensed physician, rendering the candidate unable to perform the elected position's duties and which appears reasonably certain to continue without substantial improvement until the term of office which the candidate seeks to be elected for.

Candidate substitution has been a practice abused by parties over the years, where they intentionally field placeholder candidates just to comply with the electoral deadline of filing for candidacy but will make last-minute substitutions.

This later prompted the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to set a shorter window for the withdrawal and substitution in the upcoming 2025 mid-term elections.

According to Comelec chairperson George Garcia, candidates will be able to be substituted only until 8 October of this year, except for reasons of death or disqualification.

In 2015, then Davao mayor Rodrigo Duterte also substituted for PDP-Laban's initial presidential bet, Martin Diño, although it was widely believed that they intentionally put the latter as merely a placeholder for Duterte, who later won in May 2016 polls.

Duterte's daughter, Sara Duterte, repeated this strategy, filing her candidacy as a substitute for Lakas-CMD’s Lyle Uy — the party's original vice presidential bet — two days before the deadline.

Sara also won in the May 2022 elections.