Manila: The presidential palace rejected a proposal calling for a law discriminating against individuals from running in an elective post, saying that anyone has the right to be voted upon as long as they are qualified.
“You cannot just disqualify people just because they are not rich, or are not known. There has to be a basis,” Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said.
Panelo was reacting to a measure filed recently by Senator Win Gatchalian, Senate Bill 911, which seeks to amend provisions of the Omnibus Election Code and dismiss outright, election hopefuls who are deemed either as crackpots or “nuisance” candidates without being given the chance to file their candidacy with the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
According to Panelo, every Filipino should be given the chance to run for public office provided that they respect the election process.
Panelo, who is also Chief Presidential Legal Counsel, says the authority to filter out and determine whether a candidate is serious in his or her campaign for office is the jurisdiction of the Comelec and that there is no need for such function, to be legislated.
The Philippines will be holding its mid-term elections in May 2019 and this early, hopefuls for senators had already filed their certificate of candidacy (CoC) with the Comelec.
According to the Comelec, a total of 337 aspirants for the Senate as well as party-list seats have already filed their COCs during the last day of filing on Thursday.
Senatorial candidates will be vying for 12 seats while House of Representative aspirant are allotted more than 300 seats including that from partylist groups. Aside from Senators and House members, gubernatorial and mayoralty aspirants and board members will be voted upon by some 60 million Filipino voters in May 2018.
Gatchalian, in filing Senate Bill 911, said there is a need to define what constitutes as a “nuisance” candidate and those who are serious in their candidacy.
“You can see that a lot of those who filed their CoCs are not really that serious in their bid. Some are doing it for fun; for example, there is one candidate who claims to be Jesus Christ from Cebu and other who claims to be a former lover of celebrities Kris Aquino and Mocha Uson,” he said.
He said that in order to weed out these people, his bill “will penalise those who do not take this privilege seriously and merely use the CoC filing period as a platform to disrespect our electoral process.”
According to Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez, COCs will be subjected to serious checks to edge out nuisance candidates.
