QUICK LOOK
[] April 2025 Supreme Court ruling says such permanent vacancies will be filled under Local Government Code, not under the “second placer” rule adopted by the SC in 2012 Jalosjos case.
[] Under LGC of 1991, the President through the executive secretary shall appoint the replacement, nominated by the party under which the removed councilor won. If there’s no first placer because of disqualification, why should the party that fielded him be rewarded with the right to fill the vacancy with its own party member?
#5 IN CEBU CITY NORTH. Councilor Joel Garganera was one of the eight councilors in Cebu City’s north district whom Comelec had proclaimed among the 2025 election winners.
Kons Joel got 94,194 votes as #5 councilor. He now sits in the City Council, comprising of 16 elected members (eight each in north and south districts), two de officio members, and a presiding officer, the vice mayor.
This is Garganera’s fourth consecutive term, allegedly illegal according to a complaint filed with Comelec on April 3, 2025, a few weeks before the May 12 elections. Complainant Casimero Mahilum accused Garganera of having already served as councilor in 2016, 2019 and 2022 and thus is ineligible under the Constitution to serve a fourth consecutive term from 2025-2028.
‘INTERRUPTED’ SECOND TERM. Garganera’s principal defense: His full term in 2019 was interrupted by his failure to assume office on time, a delay of two weeks or so. It was deemed an interruption, his lawyers argued, no matter how brief.
“Disqualify Garganera,” one news headline shouted. Councilor Joel’s supporters may foil that with “God forbid, Hesus, Hesus, layo, pito ka lawod, ra to.” But what if it would happen, as it did in 2019 to then disqualified and evicted -- now back in City Council after their recent win -- councilors Sisenio Andales and Alvin Arcilla?
Related:
Seares: Cebu City Councilor Joel Garganera to run in 2025 for a 4th consecutive term.
Seares: Avoiding term limit: June Pe's move; Andales-Arcilla attempt
UNDER OLD RULE, DIZON WOULD BE IN. If succession would take place under the old rule, the #9 councilor-wannabe -- who’d be BOPK’s Alvin Dizon, with 82,428 votes -- would join the Magic Circle as #8, nudging up Andales (presently #8) to #7, and so on with the other councilors ahead of them.
The procedure was done in the 2019 election when Jerry Guardo and Garganera -- finishing #9 and #10 in the north councilors race -- entered the winning column, moving up to #7 and #8, after Andales and Arcilla were disqualified and removed from the Sanggunian.
NOT UNDER NEW SC RULING. Under a Supreme Court ruling of April 22, 2025 (in Datu Pax Ali Mangudadatu vs. Comelec and Sharifa Akeel Mangudadatu), the SC abandoned the “second placer rule” in local elections.
The new ruling threw out the policy adopted in Jalosjos vs Comelec cases of 2012, which enabled the No. 2 finisher to assume the post if the original winner was disqualified or removed.
The “second placer rule” has no legal basis, said the SC in its ruling announced last June. There’s no law allowing it, the SC declared, at the same time pronouncing that the rule on succession under the Local Government Code (Republic Act #7160) shall apply.
IN ALL CASES, SAYS HIGH COURT. The all-embracing application is made clear when the SC declared that the rule on succession under the Local Government Code “shall apply in all cases where a permanent vacancy results from a local elective official’s disqualification from office, regardless of the proceedings involved.”
The LGC rules are Section 44, on permanent vacancies in the offices of the governor, vice governor, mayor, and vice mayor; and Section 45, on permanent vacancies in the provincial, city and town councils. (The new SC ruling, some law experts said, “indicates that it does not apply to national elective positions” such as members of Congress.)
For permanent vacancies in the local legislatures -- Provincial Board and city councils of highly urbanized cities and independent cities -- the President through the executive secretary makes the appointment.
POLITICAL PARTY INSTIGATING COMPLAINT MIGHT NOT BENEFIT from Garganera’s disqualification, if that would happen.
His party would still have the right to name his replacement.
Kons Joel ran and won under Kusug and Kusug would nominate the new councilor. The party shall submit the nomination and certificate of membership of the nominee to the Office of the President.
There may be critics -- as there were justices who dissented to the rejection of the “second placer rule” -- who will see this as “reward to the party that fielded an ineligible candidate.”
NO FIRST-PLACER TO SPEAK OF? Cebu Media Legal Aid (Cemla) member Jose Marie Poblete noted a “lingering issue”: “If the disqualification is based on the fact that the COC is void from the beginning, there can be no first-placer to speak of. Thus, which party will now claim ownership of the vacant position?”
If, say, Garganera would be considered not to be a legal candidate in the first place, why would his party be given the right to name the replacement?
People have assumed that a politician or political party funded the complaint against Garganera. Casimero -- a virtual unknown, surely not known to have resources for an expensive lawsuit -- on his own filed, or was persuaded to file, the complaint.
Whatever the complainant’s motive, a “de kampanilla” law firm has handled the case and it’s not known who’s picking up the tab Casimero’s backers must not have known at the time of filing that Garganera couldn’t be replaced by a candidate from their party.
BIG ‘IF’ HERE IS, OF COURSE, THE COMELEC RULING. That could come quickly, as the decision against Alvarez and Arcilla did, followed soon by the SC affirmation of the two councilors’ ouster. Or it would not, as the SC is better known for its “glacial pace” and may take so much more time to resolve as to eat up the disputed three-year term.
Delay could make the ruling useful only to jurisprudence, not to the winning litigant or the interest he seeks to advance.