MANILA, Philippines — The Supreme Court on Tuesday, October 1, issued a temporary restraining order against a resolution of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) that allows public appointive officials to continue holding office even after being nominated as party-list representatives.
This was announced by Supreme Court Spokesperson Camille Ting on Tuesday, saying that the high court has issued a restraining order to implement Comelec Resolution 11045.
“All parties are required to observe the status quo that public appointive officials are deemed resigned upon filing their certificate of candidacy,” Ting said.
The high court also ordered the Comelec to comment on the petition within a non-extendable period of 10 days from notice.
The petition was filed by election lawyer Romulo Macalintal on September 16, challenging the Comelec resolution. He argued that it would “create an unfair playing field for candidates without government affiliations.”
“While it may be argued that the candidates in party-lists are the groups themselves, it is the height of hypocrisy to claim that public officials nominated by party-lists will not engage in electioneering or partisan political activity,” Macalintal said.
“To top it all off, these officials will remain in office while campaigning for party-list seats. If they lose, they are not even considered resigned from their positions. In other words, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain,” he added.
The whole petition stems from Section 67 of the Omnibus Election Code:
Any elective official, whether national or local, running for any office other than the one which he is holding in a permanent capacity, except for President and Vice President, shall be considered ipso facto resigned from his office upon the filing of his certificate of candidacy.
When asked for comment, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said the poll body welcomed the issuance of the injunctive writ.
“As we said before, we support the filing of the petition to the extent of hopefully clarifying certain gray areas in the law and existing jurisprudence,” Garcia said in a message to Philstar.com.
The filing of certificates of candidacy for the 2025 midterm elections officially started on October 1 and will end on October 8.
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