Comelec rejects petition for people’s initiative

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) today denied the petition for a people’s initiative to amend the Constitution. Comelec said the petition could not be given “due course” because of a 1997 Supreme Court ruling preventing the poll body from entertaining such.

In a five-page resolution, Comelec ruled en banc that it is standing by the High Court’s ruling on Santiago vs. Comelec, where RA 6735 or the law providing for an initiative and referendum was declared “incomplete and inadequate” to cover the system of an initiative. Comelec is thus “permanently enjoined” from entertaining any petition to amend the Constitution until a “sufficient law” will be passed to implement the initiative. (Read the Comelec resolution.)

“The commission is not unmindful of the transcendental importance of the right of the people under a system of initiative. However, neither can we turn a blind eye to the pronouncement of the High Court that in the absence of a valid enabling law, this right of the people remains nothing but an ’empty right,'” the Comelec said.

Under RA 6735, a petition to amend the Constitution requires signatures of 12 percent of all registered voters and at least three percent of voters in each congressional district.

In the petition, Sigaw ng Bayan and the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines said they were able to gather enough signatures to meet the 12-percent requirement.

But Comelec said it had to deny the petition “even if the signatures in the petition appear to meet the required minimum number of registered votes.”

Anti-Charter change groups have declared the signature campaign for the people’s initiative “anomalous,” claiming that signatures in the Sigaw petition have been “fabricated.”Sigaw ng Bayan spokesperson Raul Lambino have denied these allegations; he said the verification of signatures would prove his accusers wrong.

The verification of signatures in the Sigaw petition would pave the way for a plebiscite to approve revisions to Articles VI and VII of the Constitution and a new Article XVIII of Transitory provisions for the “orderly shift from the presidential to parliamentary system.”

In a forum last Monday, Senator Franklin Drilon asked Comelec to allow the STOP Chacha Movement to present evidence on the alleged fabrication of signatures even if issues of legality and sufficiency have not been resolved.

In an opposition filed last Tuesday, the Counsels for the Defense of Liberties (CODAL) said Comelec could easily declare the signatures “in order” even without any evidence presented or objections raised. “And all the Supreme Court has to do is to remand the case to Comelec and order it to set the plebiscite, which Sigaw hopes will take place in January 2007 at most,” CODAL said. (Read the opposition.)

CODAL spokesperson Neri Colmenares believes “that Sigaw’s gameplan is to have its petition dismissed so it can immediately go to the Supreme Court” where it can expect a “favorable decision.”

“Comelec’s dismissal of the petition is actually expected since this is the fastest means to have the Santiago ruling reversed,” Colmenares explains.

Colmenares also says the petition is “fatally defective” since only Lambino and ULAP head Erico Aumentado signed as petitioners and merely attached the signature sheets of the 10 million voters.

“Clearly, what should have been filed is a petition of the signatories representing 12 percent of the registered voters. Since only two people signed the petition, it does not fulfill this constitutional requirement,” he says, “What Sigaw actually did the past few months was circulate signature sheets without showing to the voter-signatories the actual petition, which makes all the supposed millions of signatures void and completely useless.”

CODAL is one of the eight groups which filed separate oppositions seeking the dismissal of the petition. Other groups include the citizens group One Voice and Alternative Law Groups Inc. Minority members from the Senate and House of Representatives also filed oppositions against the Sigaw petition.