Comelec unfazed by critics, defends ruling on DQ case

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) defended the decision of its First Division to dismiss the three petitions seeking to disqualify presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. in the May 2022 polls.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said the poll body is not saying that failure to file an income tax return is not a punishable offense or that it’s okay.

“It’s wrong to say that the Comelec is saying that there is no offense in failure to file ITR because the Comelec said there is. But there was a point to be made about the difference between mala in se and mala prohibitum,” Jimenez said.

“This is a very important criminal law principle. What it says is that a crime mala in se is a crime that is by itself naturally wrong…But there are some offenses that are mala prohibitum, which means they are considered wrong under the law, only because a special law exists that criminalizes it,” he said.

Jimenez was clarifying a portion of the Comelec First Division’s resolution on the disqualification cases against presidential candidate Marcos Jr. which reads that “the failure to file tax returns is not inherently wrong in the absence of a law punishing it.”

The resolution also stated that “the said omission became punishable only through the enactment of the Tax Code.”

The Comelec official also explained that failure to file an ITR is not by itself tax evasion, noting that these are two different offenses punished differently under the law.

Earlier, the Comelec First Division promulgated its resolution dismissing three disqualification cases against Marcos due to “lack of merit.”

These are cases filed by martial law survivors through Bonifacio Ilagan, Akbayan party-list group, and National Commission on Muslim Filipinos Commissioner Abubakar Mangelen.

Jimenez said that “the characterization of lack of merit basically refers to the fact that all of the allegations that supposedly pointed towards the disqualification of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. were basically dismissed.”

Presidential candidate Senator Panfilo Lacson declined to comment on the Comelec decision.

“We have no comment because as I said, in our campaign, we will rise on our own merits, presenting our platforms, our programs, our plans,” he said.

Another presidential candidate, Vice President Leni Robredo, said the decision was difficult to understand because it said there was no crime, even though there were convictions before the regional trial court and the Court of Appeals.

She said the decision posed more questions.

Aksyon Demokratiko presidential candidate Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso said he hoped other Filipinos would not emulate Marcos by not paying taxes.

PROMDI standard bearer Senator Manny Pacquiao said they were not surprised by the decision, which he said would have no effect on their campaign, which is to convince people that the Philippines needs a leader who will not cheat and steal.

Marcos’s running mate, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, welcomed the decision.

“Of course, this is a welcome development for the UniTeam,” she said, noting that the Marcos candidacy and the campaign would go forward.

Meanwhile, a civil society group on Friday said they will file a motion for reconsideration next week to overturn the Comelec First Division ruling.

Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law (CARMMA) said they would file their motion either on Monday or Tuesday next week.

Petitioner Bonifacio Ilagan said he lamented the ruling.

“The decision as penned by Commissioner {Aimee) Ferolino has merely strengthened our doubts regarding the integrity of the process,” Ilagan said.

Retired Comelec commissioner Rowena Guanzon, who said she would have voted to disqualify Marcos, said Ferolino should inhibit herself if a motion for reconsideration is filed.

“If Ferolino has any shame left, she should inhibit herself from voting on the motion for reconsideration,” Guanzon said on Twitter.

Guanzon said the Comelec First Division’s resolution on the Marcos case, which was written by Ferolino, exhibited “atrocious logic.”

“Ferolino’s Resolution is a must read for lawyers and non-lawyers. Atrocious logic. It is fraught with grammatical and typographical errors,” she said.

In a post on Facebook, Guanzon—who earlier said Marcos should be disqualified from the presidential race over “moral turpitude”—attacked some of Ferolino’s arguments in her decision.

She said Ferolino equating crimes involving moral turpitude with crimes mala in se as upheld in the case of Zari vs. Flores is “no longer true” as it was overtaken by the Supreme Court jurisprudence on International Rice Research Institute vs. National Labor Relations Commission.

“[It] cannot always be ascertained whether moral turpitude does or does not exist by classifying a crime as malum in se or as malum prohibitum, since there are crimes which are mala in se and yet but rarely involve moral turpitude and there are crimes which involve moral turpitude and are mala prohibita only,” Guanzon wrote.

The retired commissioner said this was upheld in the case of Dela Torre vs. Comelec and Villanueva in 1996.

“So, it is quite wrong to say that an offense does not involve moral turpitude simply because it is an offense mala prohibita,” she said.