THE Liberal Party and its presidential candidate Mar Roxas must be sanctioned for failure to submit their Statement of Campaign Contributions and Expenses even after the Commission on Elections announced that it would not extend the deadline last June 8.
Lawyer JV Bautista of the United Nationalist Alliance also urged the Comelec to deny the LP’s request for an extension in filing their SOCE because doing so would make it appear that the LP and Roxas are above the rules that were implemented for other parties and candidates.
Citing Comelec Resolution No. 9991—otherwise known as the Omnibus Rules and Regulations Governing Campaign Finance and Disclosure in Connection with the May 9, 2016 Elections—Bautista said LP intentionally failed to submit its SOCE on or before the June 8 deadline which is “final and non-extendible.”
According to Bautista, the Comelec’s mandatory deadline was clear and well-defined but LP gave flimsy excuses and still had the audacity to be exempted from the rules.
“All presidential candidates in the May 2016 Elections, other than Roxas and all other major political parties other than the Liberal Party, exerted tremendous effort and manpower to timely submit their SOCEs. Roxas and the Liberal Party should not be given any special treatment,” Bautista said.
“Having voluntarily participated in the May 2016 elections, they are expected to strictly comply with the pertinent laws, rules and regulations and deadlines that are implemented and imposed by the Honorable Commission,” Bautista said in his letter to the Comelec,” he added.
He said the Comelec cannot be lax in implementing its own rules and even the Supreme Court has aptly held in all its decisions that procedural rules should not be belittled or dismissed.
But Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said they will review previous rulings of the poll body and declined to say whether the Comelec would affirm its own regulations.
“In this case, we need to look at the past decisions of our former commission and what other government agencies usually do. For example, on the filing of income tax return, if they submitted late, what are the consequences?” Bautista said in a radio interview over GMA radio station DZBB.
He said the reason why they have not decided on the matter is because the head of the Comelec-Campaign Finance Office Commissioner Christian Robert Lim is on leave for two weeks but the matter will be taken up before June 30.
In case the en banc decided to scrap the request of Roxas on the extension, Bautista said they will implement possible consequences such as LP’s candidates are not allowed to assume their respective offices or the party and Roxas should pay the fine.
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez has earlier said that the position of Vice President-elect Leni Robredo may be in peril after her political party, the LP failed to file its SOCE on June 8.
Six day after the deadline however, the LP has finally submitted its SOCE, but the SFO said that they accepted the documents as part of their “ministerial” duty. Losing Presidential candidate Manuel Roxas II however failed yet again to submit his SOCE.