Lawyer asks SC to hold Koko Pimentel ineligible for current term

Lawyer Ferdinand Topacio has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to declare Senator Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III "ineligible" for his current term of office.

Topacio has filed a petition asking the court to annul the Commission on Elections' (Comelec) dismissal of his disqualification case against the senator, who won in the 2019 midterm elections and is due to serve until 2025.

The lawyer argued Pimentel should not have been allowed to hold a Senate seat via the 2019 polls because it would be his third consecutive term, violating the two-consecutive term limit in the Constitution.

Pimentel first ran for the Senate in 2007 but was only proclaimed in 2011, after the Senate Electoral Tribunal ruled in favor of his poll protest against former senator Juan Miguel Zubiri, and served the remainder of the term until 2013.

He was reelected in 2013 and in 2019.

In rejecting Topacio's disqualification case, the Comelec last year said the term limit did not apply to Pimentel because his first term had been interrupted.

“It is clear that Pimentel has not fully served his first term as a Senator; thus, the two-term limit does not yet apply to him. In view of the foregoing, Pimentel is eligible to run for Senator in the May 2019 NLE (National and Local Elections),” the Comelec ruled.

But Topacio argued before the SC that there was "no actual interruption" in Pimentel's case because he "was never a Senator before the 2007 National Elections."

He said this is unlike the SC case of then-Viga, Catanduanes mayor Abelardo Abundo, Sr., in which his opponent was "erroneously" proclaimed the winner and occupied the mayor's office until only around a year was left in the term.

Eventually declared the winner, Abundo assumed office in 2006, nearing the end of what was supposed to be a 2004-2007 term. He had also won in 2001 and would again become mayor in 2007.

The Comelec cited Abundo's case in its ruling on Topacio's disqualification case.
"Succinctly stated, unlike Mayor Abundo, Respondent Pimentel's reign as a senator was never interrupted as he continued to hold his senatorial office from the moment he took his first oath of office on 12 August 2011," Topacio said.

He insisted Pimentel's first term started in 2011, and the second in 2013.
He said the time the senator was in office prior to 2013 should be construed as part of the first term "since these one (1) to two (2) year excess cannot be cramped together in the term (2013-2019) as it would already violate the six (6) year limit provided by Section 4, Article VI, of the 1987 Constitution."

This provision says no senator shall serve for more than two consecutive six-year terms.

"Voluntary renunciation of the office for any length of time shall not be considered as an interruption in the continuity of his service for the full term of which he was elected," it states. — BM, GMA News