Election not disqualification issue

We write on behalf of our client, Rep. Lucy Marie Torres-Gomez in connection with Neal Cruz’s May 23 column (“Loser wants to replace Lucy Torres in Leyte”).

We appreciate Cruz’s enlightening column on how losing candidates could possibly win the elections despite the overwhelming votes received by their winning rivals. Allow us, however, to clarify certain facts regarding the candidacy of Richard Gomez and his wife, Representative Lucy.

It is true that Richard was disqualified to run for congressman in the fourth district of Leyte for lack of residency requirement, but his Certificate of Candidacy (COC) was never cancelled by the Commission on Elections. Since he still had an existing COC at that time, then the substitution made by Lucy was valid. This position was sustained by the Comelec en banc in Resolution 8890 (issued May 8, 2010), approving and upholding Lucy’s substitution as the Liberal Party’s congressional candidate in Leyte’s fourth district. In the same resolution, the Comelec declared that the First Division did not order the cancellation of Richard’s COC but merely ordered his disqualification. Resolution 8890 was never assailed by the petitioner in the disqualification case, thus it had long attained finality.

At present, there are two pending cases before the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) against Representative Lucy: an election protest filed by Eufrocino Codilla Jr. and a quo warranto case filed by Silverio Tagolino, a proxy of Codilla. Contrary to what Cruz wrote, Lucy did not appeal eight times to different agencies to stop the HRET hearing. She never engaged in any forum shopping. She only appealed once to the Supreme Court when she filed a Petition for Certiorari (now pending) questioning the HRET’s refusal to dismiss the election protest despite the failure of Codilla to pay the necessary fees for the revision of ballots and for the conduct of an actual recount. Ordinarily under HRET’s rules, such failure would result to a summary dismissal of the election protest.

In the same petition, Lucy also questioned the propriety of raising an issue on the qualification of a candidate in an election protest. Since Codilla failed to appeal Resolution 8890 (approving the substitution) to the Supreme Court, he is now desperately and crudely trying to convert his election protest into yet another disqualification case. This cannot be done.

We believe that these are actually nuisance suits. Codilla and Tagolino failed and refused to appear in court and testify in support of their protests. After filing these nuisance suits, they ran away, refusing to engage the incumbent congresswoman in an intellectual trial. Anyway, these cases are still pending with the HRET.

We agree with Cruz that the will of the people must be respected.
—ALEX O. AVISADO JR. and
MARIA CRISTINA
GARCIA-RAMIREZ,
counsels for Rep. Lucy
Marie Torres-Gomez