The Commission on Elections (Comelec) Second Division has declared outgoing Manila 6th District Representative Bienvenido “Benny” Abante Jr. as the duly elected representative for the district, nullifying the certificate of candidacy (CoC) of his rival, Luis “Joey” Chua Uy.

In a 22-page ruling released Thursday, the Comelec Second Division sided with Abante’s petition challenging Uy’s citizenship.

Abante alleged that Uy “could not have derived the status of a natural-born citizen because his father did not have such status at the time of Respondent’s birth.”

He also asserted that Uy’s father, Uy Ho, was naturalized as a Filipino citizen five years after Joey Uy’s birth in 1962.

Citing the 1935 Constitution, Abante argued that legitimate children of foreign fathers could not automatically acquire natural-born status under those circumstances.

The Comelec Second Division upheld that Uy “could not be a lawful candidate, much less validly elected and proclaimed, as a district representative of the 6th District of the City of Manila because he clearly lacked the essential eligibility of being a natural-born Filipino citizen.”

“Respondent is barred from being a member of the House of Representatives, based on substantive grounds existing even prior to the filing of his CoC,” it added.

Consequently, the division declared Abante “the lone candidate and should be proclaimed as the duly elected Member of the House of Representatives for the 6th District of the City of Manila in the 2025 national and local elections.”

Votes cast for Uy are now considered invalid, leaving Abante as the only qualified candidate with the highest votes. Uy had initially won a tight race against Abante, garnering 64,746 votes compared to Abante’s 63,358.

Meantime, Abante hailed the Comelec ruling, saying that it is a “victory for the Constitution and Rule of Law.”