The call to suspend the 2022 national and local elections is ignoring the Constitution, an official of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said Monday.
Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said pushing back the scheduled May 9 polls is disregarding the Charter.
“When you call for suspension of elections of this magnitude, nationwide and for at least a year, you’re basically saying ignore the Constitution, not hold elections the way the Constitution says it should. The implications of that is the need to amend Constitution. You cannot ignore the Constitution,” he said in a virtual press briefing.
“You want to suspend elections but you need to hold an elections/plebiscite to suspend the elections. To amend the Constitution, you need to have a plebiscite,” Jimenez added.
Should the elections get suspended, Jimenez said there would be no officials elected.
“There is no holdover provision. Which means, that if you suspend elections for 2023, then that means you have entire year with no elected officials. What are we going to do? Nominate, appoint, by whose authority, for what purpose? This doom mongering doesn’t help. The petition itself is probably based on a mistaken notion, that the Comelec has the power to suspend elections,” Jimenez added.
He said the Comelec can suspend electoral exercises but on certain conditions, such as when free and fair elections do not exist.
“Example: there is fire, ballots have been damaged by flood, all the teachers were infected with Covid-19 for those reasons, we can suspend elections. But only while that reason exists. For example, there have been replacement, then you can hold elections right away. Not supposed to suspend on a great length of time,” the poll body official said.
Last week, the Coalition for Life and Democracy filed a petition before the Comelec asking to postpone next year’s elections and instead reschedule it to 2023 due to the pandemic.
“While Comelec has that power, the proposed application of the power is wrong. If the commission wants to take it up, that’s fine. But, again, it doesn’t look like it has much of a chance,” Jimenez said.
Meanwhile, the poll body is set to conduct the electronic raffle (e-raffle) of 166 party-list groups to determine the order of their listing on the official ballot for next year’s polls on Tuesday.
Source: Philippines News Agency
