INCOMING Speaker and Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez on Wednesday urged the Commission on Elections to make public a copy of its resolution extending the deadline for candidates and political parties to file their campaign expenditure reports, insisting that the move was illegal.
Alvarez, a lawyer, said the failure of the Comelec to release a copy of the resolution would damage the image of the institution.
“Right or wrong, there seems to be a public perception that the release of the resolution is being held in abeyance until after the sought-for 14-day extension lapses so it may no longer be questioned before the Supreme Court,” Alvarez said.
“If this is true, the Comelec may end up as a damaged institution as it will be a party to two very serious violations—extending the non-extendible deadline in the filing of SOCEs [statement of contributions and expenditures] and depriving the people of the right to question that extension before the Supreme Court,” he said.
Alvarez’s PDP-Laban, among other parties concerned, vowed to question the legality of the Comelec’s extension before the Supreme Court.
The Comelec en banc had earlier voted 4-3 to extend the filing period for SOCEs until June 30 upon the request of Liberal Party and other political parties that failed to comply with the deadline.
The extension came despite a recommendation from the poll body’s Campaign Finance Office to deny the LP’s request because it gave the LP an unfair advantage.
In the CFO memo, Commissioner Christian Robert Lim cited Republic Act 7166 which provides that the submission of SOCE must be done within 30 days after the elections.
Alvarez said the copy of the Comelec resolution “is of utmost importance” when the case challenging its legality is brought to the Supreme Court.
Alvarez criticized the Comelec for violating the law as well as its own rules embodied in Comelec Resolution 9991, which ruled out late filings and affirmed that the June 8 deadline was “final and non-extendible.”
“We are supposed to be a government of laws and not of men. Having said that, what’s the point of enacting laws if they will not be implemented or, worse, as in the case of the Comelec and RA 7166, the poll body becomes the primary violator of the law it is supposed to uphold and enforce?” Alvarez said.
Alvarez said the law is clear that the late filing of SOCEs simply means non-filing at all.
The law also provides that the non-filing of SOCE would prevent winning candidates from assuming their posts, Alvarez added.
The LP and its standard bearer, Manuel Roxas II, filed their SOCEs on June 14. Observers had observed that Roxas’ failure to meet the original June 8 deadline put in peril the positions of their elected members, including Vice President-elect Leni Robredo.
To dramatize his reason for the late filing, Roxas on Wednesday went to the Comelec with a small yellow dump truck containing his proof of expenses from the elections.
The camp of Roxas went to the Comelec office on Wednesday carrying at least 50 black boxes of receipts and other documents in support of his SOCE, 14 days after the June 8 deadline of submission.
“It is really quite a voluminous number of receipts sorted out. As you can see, those are 50 boxes. We waited for all receipts to be completed and sorted them according to categories as required by Comelec rules. That is also our explanation,” Roxas’ campaign spokesman Rep. Barry Gutierrez told the reporters in an interview.
Gutierrez said Roxas may be late from filing his SOCE but he complied with the requirements for the purposes of transparency.
““We are providing the Comelec and the public the full record of what was spent during the campaign, where the contributions came from and with full compliance of the transparency requirement under the law,” Gutierrez noted.
Roxas is the only presidential candidate who failed to meet the June 8 deadline of filing of SOCE, citing the voluminous amount of receipts. With Sara Susanne D. Fabunan
