IN 2013, then Cebu City councilor Jun Pe, facing the three-term wall, made a novel and daring move to scale it by transferring his residence from the north district to the south. He believed that would enable him to seek a fourth consecutive term and thus beat the ban. Same City Council, still as councilor just different district. This year, two city councilors, Sisinio Andales and Alvin Arcilla, obstructed by the same barrier, would hurdle it by alleging interruption of their three consecutive terms. They were suspended by the ombudsman, they argue, thus they didn’t serve their term in full. Both political moves-- two elections apart and all made by members of BOPK, the city’s ruling party–may be seen as shrewd maneuvers to get around the law. In their zest and zeal to serve the public or in excessive greed, depending upon who’s judging them.
Why Jun failed
Jun Pe did not succeed. Comelec struck down his candidacy, oddly not on the issue of term limit but because of lack of residence. Comelec didn’t see proof that he lived on 7R Duterte St., Calderon Compound, in Barangay Guadalupe for two years. The law requires at least one year. Comelec said Pe was being voted on by a different electorate: south district voters, no longer by north district voters. Comelec en banc upheld in June 2013 the poll body’s division ruling in February that term limit was not the issue. The case did not reach the Supreme Court (SC) as Pe lost in the May election and probably lost interest as well. Would the SC have ruled differently?
Most likely. At the time, the Aldovino vs. Comelec and Asilo ruling was already the precedent. In Aldovino (GR#184836, 2009), the SC ruled that the “involuntary severance” from office that would break the three-term limit does not include preventive suspension.
Suspension not severance
Andales and Arcilla, with then mayor Mike Rama and 10 other councilors, were suspended last May 17, 2016 for six months by Malacañang in connection with the P20,000-each typhoon Yolanda cash aid granted to all City Hall officials and employees. They continued, during suspension, to keep their position and title; they were not replaced, and there was no authority to appoint new officials and no new councilors took over. It was not severance, the SC ruled in Aldovino.
Requirements met
In a later decision (Abundo vs. Comelec, 2012), the SC laid down two requisites for term limit: (1) the official was elected for three consecutive terms in the same local government post, and (2) he has fully served three consecutive terms.
Andales and Arcilla meet those requisites. So did Jun Pe who ran “for the same local government post” six years ago. Neither the Constitution nor the SC speaks of different sets of voters. “Same position,” “same post,” nothing about the kind of electors. The SC would’ve dumped the Comelec ruling on Pe had it reached the high tribunal. In Andales’s and Arcilla’s cases, the high court still has to depart from the precedent that preventive suspension does not break continuity of term limit. If they have different jurisprudence, the two councilors still have to tell the public about it.
What will work
There are other ways that have worked for many politicians in coping with term limits: run for another position or place a surrogate (wife, son, daughter, sibling , etc.) to warm the seat in one’s absence.
Those tactics also leave some bad taste in the mouth but they seem more acceptable than battering the wall of the Constitution and the law as interpreted by the high court.