The Supreme Court has granted the petition of the Duterte Youth (Duty to Energize the Republic Through the Enlightenment of the Youth) Party-List against the substitution of former Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner Rowena Guanzon as the first nominee of P3PWD Party-List which won a seat in the 2022 party-list elections.
In the decision of the high court on August 20, 2024, Comelec Minute Resolution No. 22-0774 which allowed the substitution of Guanzon, who had just retired from the poll body at the time, was declared null and void, ABS-CBN News reported.
The SC said the Comelec resolution was issued with “grave abuse of discretion” as far as the approved substitution of nominees of P3PWD beyond the Comelec’s deadline.
It also said the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against Guanzon issued on June 29, 2022, is declared permanent.
“The decision is immediately executory,” the court said in the decision penned by Associate Justice Ricardo Rosario.
The court noted that there was a pattern of “whimsicality and arbitrariness” in the way the approving commissioners acted upon the substitution of P3PWD’s nominees.
“Rather than promoting free, orderly, and honest elections, the Comelec en banc shamelessly allowed itself to be used as a tool in perpetuating a scheme,” the court said.
The court also directed P3PWD to submit additional nominees but they are prohibited from renominating the nominees whose substitutions were declared null and void.
Aside from Guanzon’s, also declared null and void are the nominations of Rosalie Garcia, Cherie Belmonte-Lim, Donnabel Tenorio and Rodolfo Villar.
The court also dismissed for lack of merit the exchange of indirect contempt charges between Guanzon and the Duterte Youth for lack of merit and for being procedurally defective.
Associate Justices Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa and Jhosep Lopez dissented from the decision, ABS-CBN News further reported.
Caguioa noted that there were also substitutions pending the publication of the revised list of nominees, including Duterte Youth.
“It would be an egregious error to recognize P3PWD’s right to select its nominees and, at the same time, restrain its freedom of association by preventing the nomination of Guanzon, Garcia, Belmonte-Lim, Tenorio, and Villar,” Lopez said.
