Bowing to pressure?

Just what is holding up the en banc Commission on Elections (Comelec) from deciding with finality the disqualification or eligibility issues facing former Sen. Serge Osmeña and incumbent Sen. Koko Pimentel?

To date, even as the Comelec has released the “final list” of senatorial bets for this year’s polls, the two problematic Senate bets were included in the list on the lame excuse that their cases have not been decided on by the poll body.

This seems pretty odd, considering that their cases should be fairly easy to deal with since the two specific disqualification cases filed by complainants against the two Senate aspirants are pretty cut and dried and decided on following the constitutional rules, as well as election rules.

Suspicions abound that great pressure is being applied on the Comelec to qualify Osmeña and Pimentel to run in May.

Why shouldn’t suspicions of pressure abound since the poll body is taking too long a time to decide on these cases with finality?

The announcement said Pimentel and Osmeña’s names will be on the official ballot for the midterm polls in May but they may not be able to sit even if they win if the Comelec decides to disqualify them later on.

Pimentel and Osmeña are both facing disqualification cases before the Comelec.

Why have them run if they may be disqualified should they win, especially when the Constitution clearly states that senators can serve only for two terms — or a total of 12 years — including a reelection victory?

Complainant Ferdinand Topacio has asked the poll body to disqualify Pimentel for violating the constitutional provision that limits a senator’s tenure to two consecutive terms and therefore should be disqualified from running for the same seat.

Should Comelec not disqualify Pimentel, the senator, if he wins, will be serving three terms, which is clearly against what the Constitution bans: a third consecutive term.

It has to be recalled that Pimentel took over the remaining term of Sen. Miguel Zubiri, who decided to resign from the elective position he won, as there was a black propaganda war waged against him by the camp of Pimentel. If allowed to run and if he wins in the Senate race, the aspirant will have served in the Senate for over 14 years, as by running, winning and made eligible by the Comelec would be a blatant and willful violation which is an impeachable offense the poll commissioners will have to face.

The case is pretty cut and dried, too. What’s so difficult to understand from the charter provision and decide based on the Constitution? Even morons can understand this provision.

In the case of Osmeña, the rules are pretty clear as he could be disqualified from running for public office due to his supposed failure to file his statement of contributions and expenses during his 2010 and 2016 Senate bids.

The rules call for a perpetual disqualification for the former senator.

But the Comelec spokesman’s latest statement virtually admits that the poll body won’t likely decide on the two senatorial candidates as Jimenez came up with the possibility, if not probability, that the two bets won’t be disqualified. The poll spokesman said: “If they are disqualified later on and they are already proclaimed, they can be removed through quo warranto.”

Comelec has no mandate to resolve a case through a quo warranto and such cases are handled by the Senate Election Tribunal (SET), as quo warranto cases filed against winning senators do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Comelec whose jurisdiction ends with the proclamation of a winning candidate.

Quo warranto cases filed by complainants before the SET are useless. The most recent case filed against a senator based on her citizenship before the SET ended up favoring the senator and a colleague. The fake Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno let her run anyway, despite there having been no majority count on the citizenship issue and is not doctrine.

Even today, the complaint filed by the losing 2016 senatorial bet who placed 13th and questioning the victory of Leila de Lima on account of fraud has not even been decided by the SET.

The Comelec deliberately refuses to rule against the disqualification case against the two, as it wants the courts, the SET and ultimately the SC to handle these. By that time, the two who should have been deemed disqualified would have served their usurped terms,

And in all probability, the pressure from very influential people who want the Comelec not to make a decision negative to the two bets — or one of two bets at the very least — and get the SET and the High Court to handle the quo warranto cases.

Comelec will have set very dangerous precedents, as will the Senate and the High Court, should these rulings favor the two Senate candidates.

The Constitution then becomes a meaningless document and there can no longer be claimed that ours is a rule of law because it no longer is.