G.R. No. 178624 June 30, 2009
JOSE
CONCEPCION, JR., Petitioner,
vs.
COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS, Respondent.
FACTS: Petition for certiorari filed
by Jose Concepcion, Jr. (petitioner) "seeking to set aside the En
Banc Resolution dated 02 April 2007 and Order dated 8 May 2007" of
respondent Commission on Elections (COMELEC).
The National Citizen’s Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) filed a
Petition for Accreditation to Conduct the Operation Quick Count with the
COMELEC, docketed as SSP No. 07-001. The
present petitioner – then the incumbent Punong Barangay of Barangay Forbes
Park, Makati City – was one of the signatories of the NAMFREL petition in his
capacity as the National Chairman of NAMFREL.
COMELEC promulgated Resolution No. 7798 (Resolution
7798) that reads in full –
WHEREAS, Section 3 of Executive Order [EO] No. 94 dated March 2, 1987,
provides as follows:
Sec. 3. Prohibition on barangay officials.
– No barangay official shall be appointed as member of the Board
of Election Inspectors or as official watcher of each duly registered major
political party or any socio-civic, religious, professional or any similar
organization of which they may be members.
NOW THEREFORE, to insure that elections are
peaceful, orderly, regular and credible, the Commission on Elections, by virtue
of the powers vested in it by the Constitution, the Omnibus Election Code
[OEC], EO No. 94, and other election laws RESOLVED to prohibit, as it hereby
RESOLVES to prohibit:
1. The appointment
of barangay officials which includes the Punong
Barangay, Barangay Kagawad, Barangay Secretary, Barangay Treasurer,
and Barangay Tanod, as Chairman/person and/or Member of the
BEIs or as official watcher of any candidate, duly registered major political
party, or any similar organization, or any socio-civic, religious, professional
[sic], in the May 14, 2007 National and Local Elections. The
prohibition extends to barangay officials, employees and tanods,
who are members of accredited citizens’ arms.
2. The barangay officials,
employees and tanods from staying inside any polling place,
except to cast their vote. Accordingly, they should leave the polling place
immediately after casting their vote.
The COMELEC ruled on NAMFREL’s petition for
accreditation on April 2, 2007 in the assailed Resolution (April 2, 2007
Resolution), conditionally granting NAMFREL’s
petition: the condition being that, Mr.
Jose S. Concepcion, Jr., the National Chairman of NAMFREL, must first be
removed both as a member and overall Chairman of said organization, being the
Barangay Chairman of Barangay Forbes Park, Makati City, cannot be a member much
more the overall chairman of the citizens’ arm such as NAMFREL. This is
explicitly provided for in COMELEC Resolution No. 7798 promulgated on 5 January
2007.
Soon thereafter, NAMFREL filed a "Manifestation
and Request for Re-Examination". The COMELEC, in its Order of May 8,
2007, noted the information relating to NAMFREL’s current officers, and denied
the request to examine its (COMELEC’s) interpretation of the April 2, 2007
Resolution prohibiting petitioner’s direct participation as member and National
Chairman of NAMFREL. The COMELEC reasoned out that the April 2, 2007 Resolution
is clear, and NAMFREL had not presented any convincing argument to warrant the
requested examination.
Instead of a direct reaction from NAMFREL, the
petitioner filed the present petition for certiorari under Rule 65, ostensibly
questioning the COMELEC’s April 2, 2007 Resolution, but actually raising issues
with respect to Resolution 7798.
ISSUE: WON Concepcion has a personality to file the
petition for certiorari
RULING: NO.
The first defect lies in the
petitioner’s personality to file a petition for certiorari to
address an adjudicatory resolution of the COMELEC in which he was not a party
to, and where the direct party, NAMFREL, does not even question the assailed
resolution. It would have been another matter if NAMFREL had filed the present
petition with the petitioner as intervenor because of his personal interest in
the COMELEC ruling. He could have intervened, too, before the COMELEC as an
affected party in NAMFREL’s Manifestation and Request for Examination. As a
last recourse, the petitioner could have expressly stated before this Court the
procedural problems he faced and asked that we suspend the rules based on the
unusual circumstances he could have pointed out. None of these actions,
however, took place. Instead, the petitioner simply questioned the COMELEC’s
April 2, 2007 Resolution without explaining to this Court his reason for using
Rule 65 as his medium, and from there, proceeded to attack the validity of
COMELEC Resolution 7798. Under these questionable circumstances, we cannot now
recognize the petitioner as a party-in-interest who can directly assail the
COMELEC’s April 2, 2007 Resolution in an original Rule 65 petition before this
Court.
The requirement of personality or interest is sanctioned no less by
Section 7, Article IX of the Constitution which provides that a decision,
order, or ruling of a constitutional commission may be brought to this Court on
certiorari by the aggrieved party within thirty days from
receipt of a copy thereof. This requirement is repeated in Section
1, Rule 65 of the Rules of Court, which applies to petitions for certiorari
under Rule 64 of decisions, orders or rulings of the constitutional commissions
pursuant to Section 2, Rule 64. Section
1, Rule 65 essentially provides that a person aggrieved by any
act of a tribunal, board or officer exercising judicial or quasi-judicial
functions rendered without or in excess of jurisdiction or with grave abuse of
discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction may file a petition
for certiorari.
An aggrieved party under Section 1, Rule 65 is one who was a party to
the original proceedings that gave rise to the original action for certiorari
under Rule 65. We had occasion to clarify and explain the "aggrieved
party" requirement in Tang v. Court of Appeals where
we said:
Although Section 1 of Rule 65 provides that the special civil action
of certiorari may be availed of by a "person
aggrieved" by the orders or decisions of a tribunal, the term "person
aggrieved" is not to be construed to mean that any person who feels injured
by the lower court’s order or decision can question the said court’s
disposition via certiorari. To sanction a contrary interpretation
would open the floodgates to numerous and endless litigations which would
undeniably lead to the clogging of court dockets and, more importantly, the
harassment of the party who prevailed in the lower court.
In a situation wherein the order or decision being questioned underwent
adversarial proceedings before a trial court, the "person
aggrieved" referred to under Section 1 of Rule 65 who can avail of the
special civil action of certiorari pertains to one who was a
party in the proceedings before the lower court. The correctness of
this interpretation can be gleaned from the fact that a special civil action
for certiorari may be dismissed motu proprio if
the party elevating the case failed to file a motion for reconsideration of the
questioned order or decision before the lower court. Obviously, only one who
was a party in the case before the lower court can file a motion for
reconsideration since a stranger to the litigation would not have the legal
standing to interfere in the orders or decisions of the said court. In relation
to this, if a non-party in the proceedings before the lower court has no
standing to file a motion for reconsideration, logic would lead us to the
conclusion that he would likewise have no standing to question the said order
or decision before the appellate court via certiorari. (emphasis
supplied)
The second
fatal defect lies in the petition’s thrust; it opened with and professed to be
an express challenge to the COMELEC’s adjudicatory April 2, 2007 Resolution,
but in its arguments solely attacks and prays for the partial nullity of
COMELEC Resolution 7798 issued in the exercise of the COMELEC’s rule making
power. This approach is fatally defective because the petition thereby
converts an express challenge of an adjudicatory resolution – made without the
requisite standing – into a challenge for the nullity of a regulation through
an original Rule 65 petition for certiorari.
To be sure, a COMELEC adjudicatory action can be challenged on the basis
of the invalidity of the law or regulation that underlies the action. But to do
this, a valid challenge to the adjudicatory action must exist; at the very
least, the petitioner must have the requisite personality to mount the legal
challenge to the COMELEC adjudicatory action. Where
this basic condition is absent, the challenge is unmasked for what it really is
– a direct challenge to the underlying law or regulation masquerading as a
challenge to a COMELEC adjudicatory action.1avvphi1
What is significant in appreciating this defect in the petition is the
legal reality that the petitioner was not without any viable remedy to directly
challenge Resolution 7798. A stand-alone
challenge to the regulation could have been made through appropriate mediums,
particularly through a petition for declaratory relief with the appropriate
Regional Trial Court under the terms of Rule 63 of the Rules of Court, or
through a petition for prohibition under Rule 65 to prevent the implementation
of the regulation, as the petitioner might have found appropriate to his
situation. As already mentioned, a challenge can likewise be made in the
course of validly contesting an adjudicatory order of the COMELEC. Such
challenge, however, cannot be made in an original petition
for certiorari under Rule 65 dissociated from any COMELEC
action made in the exercise of its quasi-judicial functions.
Comments
Post a Comment