Not a nuisance candidate

Not a nuisance candidate | Daily Tribune

It is a common occurrence that a person, in filing a candidacy for public office, is declared a nuisance solely because he lacks the financial means to support their campaign. This happened when the petitioner filed his application for candidacy for the highest post in the land in the last elections.

As the Comelec conducted the arduous task of weeding out those deemed undeserving, it declared the petitioner a nuisance candidate. The reason? No financial capacity. With the Comelec against him, he had no other recourse but to bring the matter to the Supreme Court. Thus, the Highest Tribunal declared:

“Here, we take judicial notice of the fact that the question of the legality of the Comelec’s finding that a candidate has no bona fide intent to run for public office and is therefore a nuisance candidate based on said candidate’s financial status arises each election season. In recent years, multiple candidates have come before this Court for affirmative relief against the Comelec’s declaration that they are nuisance candidates. The susceptibility of recurrence therefore compels the Court to resolve the issue at hand. xxx. xxx. xxx

“A nuisance candidate is one whose candidacy is lodged merely to create confusion or whose candidacy mocks or causes disrepute to the election process, hence, there is patently no intention to run for office. A candidate without the machinery of a political party or the finances to mount a nationwide campaign ‘cannot be lumped together with another candidate who was found to have mocked or caused disrepute to the election process.”

“In Maquera v. Borra, this Court declared that property qualifications cannot be imposed on electoral candidates. Doing so goes against ‘social justice, which presupposes equal opportunity for all, rich and poor alike, and that, accordingly, no person shall, by reason of poverty, be denied the chance to be elected to public office.”

“The Comelec cannot conflate the bona fide intention to run with a financial capacity requirement. A candidate’s financial capacity to sustain the rigors of waging a nationwide campaign does not necessarily equate to a bona fide intention to run for public office. The Comelec’s burden is thus to show a reasonable correlation between proof of a bona fide intention to run, on the one hand, and proof of financial capacity to wage a nationwide campaign on the other.”

“In the present case, the Comelec again repeated its general allegation of a candidate’s lack of financial capacity to wage a national campaign to shift the burden of proof upon the candidate. It pointed to the circumstances of Ollesca’s running as an independent candidate and his being an entrepreneur, arguing that Ollesca is virtually unknown and therefore has no capacity to persuade a substantial number of the electorate, thereby proving that he has no bona fide intention to run and puts the election process in mockery.”

“From the foregoing, it appears that the Comelec has the propensity to employ a ‘cookie-cutter motion’ that generally alleges a candidate’s lack of financial capacity to wage a national campaign in an attempt to shift the burden of proving bona fide intent to run for public office upon said candidate.”

A nuisance candidate is one whose candidacy is lodged merely to create confusion or whose candidacy mocks or causes disrepute to the election process.

“Unfortunately, in this case, in declaring petitioner a nuisance candidate, the Comelec simply relied on a general and sweeping allegation of petitioner’s financial incapability to mount a decent and viable campaign, which is a prohibited property requirement. It failed to discuss, much less adduce, evidence showing how petitioner’s inclusion in the ballots would prevent the faithful determination of the electorate’s will. We, therefore, hold that the Comelec acted with grave abuse of discretion in declaring petitioner a nuisance candidate.”

The facts and the quoted redacted portion of the decision are from Juan Juan Olila Ollesca v. Comelec (G.R. 258449, 30 July 2024).