Guanzon: Law on age limit for youth party-list reps covers Duterte Youth

The party-list law setting the age limit for youth sector party-list representatives covers the Duterte Youth party-list, Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Rowena Guanzon said Tuesday.

The law requires representatives of the youth sector to range in age from 25 to 30 years old on the day of the elections.

Guanzon made the position when former National Youth Commission Chairperson Ronald Cardema’s counsel, George Garcia, argued during the hearing that Cardema—who is beyond 30 years old—is qualified to substitute his wife as a Duterte Youth party-list representative because the Duterte Youth also represents "young professionals" and the law does not provide an age bracket for this sector.

“If there is no age limit for young professionals…following your argument…if someone is 85 years old, that person can still represent the youth sector in Congress. Uugod-ugod na siya roon, and yet the person is representing young professionals. That is absurd,” Guanzon said.

Likewise, Guanzon said that Cardema’s camp cannot invoke a 2013 Supreme Court ruling stating that a party-list representative can represent a sector he or she advocates for because that ruling addressed questions on qualifications of political parties as party-list groups and did not amend the age requirement set by the party-list law on a party-list representative for the youth sector.

“In the [Supreme Court] ruling, the youth sector is not involved.  We cannot apply that here because the Duterte Youth did not register as a political party, but as a representative of youth and young professionals sector,” Guanzon said.

“And so, it [Duterte Youth] must fall under the requirement of the [party-list] law,” Guanzon added.

Likewise, Guanzon assured the public that the Comelec will not issue a certificate of proclamation to Duterte Youth nominees pending the resolution of the petitions questioning the legality of Cardema’s substitution bid—a bid that he filed on May 12, a Sunday, at 5 p.m., less than a day before the start of the May 13 polls.

Guanzon said that for one, the Duterte Youth has yet to comply with the Comelec Resolution dated June 4 to publish its nominees—a move that will pave the way for petitioners to question the legality of Cardema’s substitution bid.

“Until you submit the publication of the substitute nominees, the certificate of proclamation cannot be issued. Pending this submission and resolution of the petition that could be filed against the substitution bid, they [standing] nominees cannot be substituted,” Guanzon said.

She also clarified that the petition filed against Cardema’s substitution bid by the National Union of Students in the Philippines, the College Editors Guild of the Philippines, and Youth Act Now against Tyranny, which was tackled on Tuesday, is in order, and that the filing of the petition does not prevent the petitioners from questioning Cardema’s substitution bid again once Duterte Youth publishes its substitute nominees.

Emilio Marañon III, the counsel for the petitioners, then accused Cardema of deliberately delaying the publication of nominees to avoid legal questions.

“Our petition is a precautionary measure because the assumption of office as a member of the House is June 30. There is short amount of time left. He wants to resort to technicalities,” Marañon added.

The Duterte Youth party-list won one congressional seat in the May polls. — BM, GMA News