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TWO DAYS BEFORE INAUGURATION

SC junks petitions vs. Marcos candidacy


The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously junked the petitions seeking to disqualify and cancel the certificate of candidacy of President-elect Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. in the May 2022 elections.

Voting 13-0, the high court said it finds Marcos to be qualified to run for and be elected to public office.

“Likewise, his COC, being valid and in accord with the pertinent law, was rightfully upheld by the Comelec (Commission on Elections),” the SC said in a press briefer.

The SC said Justice Henri Inting and Justice Antonio Kho did not take part in the deliberations as Inting’s sibling is incumbent Comelec Commissioner Socorro Inting while Kho is a former Comelec commissioner.

It said the member-in-charge of the cases was Justice Rodil Zalameda.

Vindicated

Marcos' party, the Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, expressed gratitude to the SC for dismissing the petitions, saying that it "vindicates the position of the party that President Marcos was under no disqualification to run for president and therefore he did not lie in his certificate of candidacy."

"This decision vindicates the legal arguments we have made as counsel for the party when the PFP intervened in the case below before the Comelec Second Division chaired by now Acting Chairman Socorro Inting," the PFP said in a statement.

"We congratulate Mr. Justice Rodil Zalameda for coming up with a learned decision that gained the unanimous vote of all the members of the court, including the respect Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen who we esteem highly as a fellow alumnus of the U.P. College of Law," the party added.

A group of petitioners who wanted Marcos out of the May 2022 presidential race because of his failure to file income tax returns from 1982 to 1985 — which they said amounted to moral turpitude and a ground for disqualification — trooped to the SC in May after the Comelec junked their petitions.

Another set of petitioners composed of Martial Law survivors also filed a petition urging the SC to declare that Marcos is perpetually disqualified from public office and cannot run for even the lowest elective position.

Marcos, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., eventually won the May elections with over 31 million votes. He is set to be sworn into office on Thursday, June 30. —with Anna Felicia Bajo/KBK/VBL, GMA News

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