BROADCASTER Bobby Nalzaro in a dySS radio commentary Saturday (Sept. 15,) said Cebu City third-term Councilors Sisenio Andales and Alvin Arcilla, both BOPK stalwarts, might run for reelection despite term limit.
Under the Constitution, which is also provided by the Local Government Code, local government officials, except barangay officials, shall not serve for more than three consecutive terms.
The reason, the Supreme Court says, is to “avoid the evil of a single person accumulating excessive power over a particular jurisdiction as result of prolonged stay in office.”
It’s doubtful if a councilor wields so much power but the ban applies to all elective local officials except in barangays. So how then could Andales and Arcilla go around the ban and run for a fourth term?
Preventive suspension
Bobby N. said the councilors are looking at the interruption of their service starting last May 17, 2016, just as they were completing their second term.
Andales and Arcilla, along with then mayor Michael Rama and vice mayor Labella and 10 other councilors, were suspended for six months by Malacañang. The preventive suspension arose from the complaint filed by Reymelio Delute for the P83.5 million paid by City Hall to all government officials and employees as P20,000-each fund aid after the mega earthquake and super typhoon Yolanda that struck some parts of the Visayas.
Involuntary severance
It wasn’t a voluntary renunciation or abandonment of office which. the ban expressly provides, cannot break the term limit. It was “involuntary severance” from office although it was short, as their second term ended in June and their third term was to begin on June 30, 2016. Length of the severance was not material. But it was not the kind of severance that breaks the ban.
What the SC ruled (in Aldovino Jr., et al vs. Comelec and Asilo, GR #184836 of 2009) as crucial is the nature of the interruption of service: Did the officials, in our case Andales and Arcilla and company, continue to keep their positions? Was there absence of government replacement and lack of authority to appoint new officials?
Andales and Arcilla didn’t lose their seats, they kept their title, no new councilors took over. They were just temporarily stopped from exercising their functions during the suspension.
Going around ban
In rejecting preventive suspension as a disruption of the term-limit count, the SC said it is “sophistry” (“unsound or misleading but clever and possible”) to consider the temporary disability to discharge functions as equivalent to severance.
Otherwise, it said, a public official could’ve himself administratively charged, suspended preventively, then returned to office after the complaint is dismissed. That would be easier than to renounce voluntarily or abandon the office and later seek election again.
Not voters’ decision
Andales and Arcilla can file their COCs (candidacy papers) in October and Comelec, as it routinely intones, will accept the documents as a matter of course and procedure. It’s up to their rivals to complain and argue before the Comelec and the courts.
But there’s already jurisprudence to support those who will oppose the reelection. Just as Andales and Arcilla might find the law and decided case to support theirs.
Would their winning affect their qualification? It would boost their ego and their cause but this is one instance where the law limits the voters’ right of choice. And the law is what the high tribunal says it is.