Sunday, November 12, 2006 People’s initiative proponents delaying decision on appeal?
ARE the petitioners in the suit before the Supreme Court (SC) seeking to amend the 1987 Constitution through a people's initiative trying to buy time by filing their motion for reconsideration from their provincial offices?
This cropped up after the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (Ulap), a group that petitioned the SC to amend the Charter through a people's initiative, filed its motion for reconsideration in Bohol instead of filing it from its headquarters in Pasig City.
Samar Governor Ben Evardone, Ulap spokesman, confirmed the report but he said this was only because Bohol Governor Erico Aumentado, Ulap president, wanted to go through it before their lawyer submits it to the SC.
Under court rules, the parties are given 15 days to appeal the October 25 ruling of the high court, which junked the people’s initiative’s petition for being fraudulent.
Evardone denied that the filing in Bohol was part of a delaying tactic to ensure that Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban would no longer be around to rule on the motion for reconsideration when he retires on December 7. Panganiban led the eight of the 15 justices who dismissed the Palace-backed petition for initiative filed by Ulap and Sigaw ng Bayan.
In that decision, the en banc court through Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said it would not want the court to be a party to a "grand deception" and "gigantic fraud" on the people by upholding the legality of the initiative petition.
But Sigaw spokesman, Attorney Raul Lambino, said the reports stating that the group's motion was filed by regular mail in Pangasinan are untrue and highly speculative.
Lambino said he filed Sigaw's motion for reconsideration on Friday from their office in Quezon City by registered mail to ensure that it would be able to meet the deadline for submission prescribed by the high court.
"Those are uncalled for speculations coming from those who are ardently trying to defeat the right of the people to amend the Constitution by casting malicious aspersions to us. What will we get out of it?" he said in a phone interview.
On the contrary, he said it was the anti-Charter change advocates who were trying to hasten the serving of the notice to the concerned parties when the October 25 decision of the court was hand-carried instead of being sent through registered mail.
As a result, Lambino said the time within which they were to file their reconsideration started immediately.
"Minadali nila ang pagbibigay sa parties ng kopya (They rushed the giving of copies to the parties). As a result, I had to work through All Saints Day’ while I was in Baguio and in Pangasinan. Minadali ko na para ma-meet naming ang deadline ng court (I had to rush it so that we could meet the court’s deadline)," he said.
He said because of the limited time alloted for them, they even neglected to include in their motion some of their arguments and counter-arguments.
Sigaw and Ulap earlier asked the high court to reverse a resolution of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) junking their petition to amend the 1987 Constitution through a people's initiative. (ECV/Sunnex)
