The Commission on Elections has disqualified more than 20 senatorial candidates and says more will eventually be disqualified before Dec. 28.
The agency says most of the 152 people who filed their certificates of candidacy for senator in the 2019 elections did not meet the prerequisites, and would not be able to sustain their election campaign.
Comelec spokesman James Jimenez declined to name the disqualified candidates but said the official list of candidates would be released before the end of the year.
He said the number of qualified party-list groups had been trimmed down to at least 100 from 185, and that a number of candidates would be declared nuisance candidates.
“Nuisance candidates are those that filed their COCs to “put the election process in mockery or disrepute; or to cause confusion among the voters by the similarity of the names of the registered candidates; or who, by other acts or circumstances, clearly have no bona fide intention to run for public office,” the Comelec said.
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Jimenez said the Comelec had started the process of disqualifying the nuisance candidates to come out with the official list by December.
“The process is now starting so that we can hit the target before Dec. 21 and we can print the ballots,” he said.
“The printing of the ballots for the 2019 polls will be done by the first week of January, so we can expect the list to be out over the next two weeks.”
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