NUISANCE

By James Jimenez

184 aspirants filed their Certificates of Candidacy from October 1 to 8, 2024. Only 155 party-list organizations filed their Certificates of Nomination and Acceptance during the same period, despite there being 160 eligible party-list organizations. All across the country, more than 43,000 candidates are competing for 18,280 elective positions. According to the Chairman of the Commission on Elections, more people filed their candidacies in 2022, with 47,583 filers for 18,100 positions, or an 11.91%increase.

Of course, these aren’t the final numbers. Our ballots, as kilometric as they are, can hardly accommodate 184 senatorial candidates and 155 party-list organizations. Now, the COMELEC must embark on the process of reviewing these filings, with the goal of releasing the final list on December 13, 2024. And one of the most well-known if least understood parts of this process has to do with the determination of whether candidates are legitimate or nuisances.

The Process

The first step towards a declaration of nuisance is the filing of a petition, filed before the COMELEC, to declare a candidate a nuisance. Any registered voter can do this – even another candidate. Most importantly, however, is that the COMELEC has the power to do this itself, on its own initiative or, motu proprio.

After a petition is filed, COMELEC will proceed to conduct an investigation to determine whether the candidate meets the criteria outlined in Section 69 of the Omnibus Election Code, which provides  that “the Commission may motu proprio or upon a verified petition of an interested party, refuse to give due course to or cancel a certificate of candidacy if it is shown that said certificate has been filed 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 by other circumstances or acts which clearly demonstrate that the candidate has no bona fide intention to run for the office for which the certificate of candidacy has been filed and thus prevent a faithful determination of the true will of the electorate.”

In other words, the COMELEC needs to determine the candidate’s background, intentions, and ability to run a credible campaign. If the COMELEC finds the candidate to be a nuisance, an order of disqualification will issue, and their name will be removed from the official list of candidates. The candidate can appeal, of course, but they’re going to have to take that up with the Supreme Court directly. Many, fearing the costs and procedural hassle of such a move, often just let the matter go.

The Jurisprudence

The Supreme Court has, from time to time, wrestled with the question of nuisance candidates, but the three cases that really stand out are Pamatong, in 2004; Marquez in 2019; and Marquez  in 2022, two of them involving the same person, and all of them versus the Commission on Elections.

In Pamatong, the Court explained why a declaration of nuisance, properly arrived at, would not be offensive to a person’s constitutional rights. The Court ruled that “the organization of an election with bona fide candidates standing is onerous enough. To add into the mix candidates with no serious intentions or capabilities to run a viable campaign would actually impair the electoral process. This is not to mention the candidacies which are palpably ridiculous so as to constitute a one-note joke. The poll body would be bogged by irrelevant minutiae covering every step of the electoral process, most probably posed at the instance of these nuisance candidates. It would be a senseless sacrifice on the part of the State.

“Owing to the superior interest in ensuring a credible and orderly election, the State could exclude nuisance candidates and need not indulge in, as the song goes, ‘their trips to the moon on gossamer wings.’ ”

In the first Marquez case, 2019, the questioned decision was the COMELEC declaration of “Marquez a nuisance candidate on the ground of failure to prove financial capacity to sustain the financial rigors of waging a nationwide campaign.” According to the COMELEC, the fact that Marquez couldn’t afford to campaign indicated that he had no bona fide intention to run for office. The Supreme Court disagreed and ruled that the COMELEC could not validly “conflate the bona fide intention to run with a financial capacity requirement.”

In its ruling, the Court hearkened back to an even older case – Maquera v. Borra – where it held that the right to vote and to be voted for shall not be made to depend upon the wealth of the candidate, since doing so would not only be offensive to the candidate’s rights but also because the right of the voters to freely choose from all qualified candidates would be compromised.

Freedom of the voters to exercise the elective franchise at a general election implies the right to freely choose from all qualified candidates for public office.

And in the subsequent Marquez case – involving the same person who had once again filed a COC for the next election –  COMELEC once again declared him a nuisance, but this time cited his status as a relative unknown.

According to the COMELEC, Marquez was a nuisance because he had not proven he was a nuisance candidate – essentially shifting the burden of proof onto him, to prove that he was well-known enough nationwide to win a Senatorial seat.

The Court clarified that the requirement of a bona fide intention to run for office was met when the candidate is able to demonstrate seriousness in running for office. Neither the law nor election rules, the Court said, requires membership in a political party nor popularity.

“Declaring one a nuisance candidate simply because he or she is not known to the entire country reduces the electoral process—a sacred instrument of democracy—to a mere popularity contest. The matter of the candidate being known (or unknown) should not be taken against the candidate but is best left to the electorate,” the Court thundered.

The COMELEC’s duty

With these Supreme Court decisions, and several others dealing with various other aspects of the declaration of nuisance, to guide them, the COMELEC in now duty-bound to scour the lists of applicants and to arrive at a final list of candidates from whom we, as voters, can choose our next crop of leaders.