Cardema filing failed to specify sector he was representing – petitioners

Aside from being too old to be a youth representative, former National Youth Commission Chairperson Ronald Cardema also failed to comply with another provision of the law when he failed to identify the specific sector he wanted to represent in his Commission on Elections filing.

Emilio Marañon III, counsel for the petitioners Millenials PH, National Union of Students of the Philippines, College Editors Guild of the Philippines and Youth Act Now against Tyranny, argued that this failure by the Duterte Youth and Cardema ran counter to the Change of Affiliation clause of the Party-list law.

The Change of Affiliation clause of the Party-list law states that an individual who was seeking to be a party-list representative, but changed his sectoral affiliation within six months before an election, would not be eligible for nomination as a party-list representative under his new party or organization.

“You need to inform the public of your chosen sector to represent more than six months before the election to be eligible and to give the public the opportunity to know the nominees and which sectors they want to represent,” Marañon argued during the hearing.

“That provision of the law is [there] precisely because while a party-list nominee is not required to be a member of the sector he or she seeks to represent based on the Supreme Court ruling on Atom Paglaum versus Comelec case, he or she should have a track record advocating for the sector.”

Marañon added that Cardema’s failure to indicate the sector he represented in the multi-sectoral Duterte Youth organization was contrary to the Supreme Court ruling in Amores vs. HRET case.

In the latter case, a then 31-year-old Joel Villanueva was not allowed a seat in Congress because he failed to indicate the specific sector he sought to represent, given that his party-list organization represented both the youth, as well as overseas Filipino workers and their families.

In closing, Marañon stressed that the absence of clarification clearly meant that the Duterte Youth organization was not a multi-sectoral organization that represented both the youth and young professionals, but a representative of the youth sector alone, which Cardema was not qualified to represent since he was older than the age limit of 30 years old.

“If you look at Duterte Youth’s petition for registration, it described itself as a leading and most vocal youth group, for orientation and mobilization of youth groups for nation building, a group which is working with government agencies to fight illegal drugs in youth communities. As such, there is clear deceit on the part of Mr. Cardema,” Marañon said.

“This move [to shift from a youth to young professional representative] is evidence of bad faith because he wants to hide the fact that he is ineligible [as youth sector representative].”

Cardema’s counsel, Rani Angeli Supnet, countered that there was no misrepresentation on the part of Cardema given that Duterte Youth had indicated in its petition for registration that it was a multi-sectoral group representing the youth and young professions.

Supnet, however, failed to clarify why Cardema did not identify the specific sector he wanted to represent in the multi-sectoral Duterte Youth party-list group. — DVM, GMA News