BONTOC, Mountain Province – the Manila-based lawyer of embattled substitute candidate Kathy Jyll G. Mayaen filed a motion before the First Division of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) praying for the outright dismissal of the pending petition for quo warranto for lack of jurisdiction and lack of merit.
In his 3-page urgent reiterative motion to resolve the instant case, lawyer George Erwin M. Garcia argued while the immediate resolution of the pending case is being sought, the Commission is implored to exercise extreme caution in determining whether to respect the results of the May 9, 2016 elections as a popular will which must not be suppressed at the slightest cause.
“To defeat the will of the majority will undermine the very foundation of our democracy,” Gracia stated in the submitted urgent motion to resolve the petition for quo warranto.
Garcia claimed there is an imperative need to resolve the petition for quo warranto considering the alleged prevalence of political divisiveness among the electorate of Mountain Province as a result of the doubt on the legitimacy of the assumption to office of one who did not run for Governor.
Further, he revealed it is worthy to reiterate that since both parties have already filed their respective pleadings and that the issue in the case is pure question of law, there is no logical reason to delay the disposition of the case.
It can be recalled that the younger Mayaen filed her certificate of candidacy as substitute candidate for his late father, Gov. Leonard G. Mayaen, who succumbed to cardiac arrest during the election period, but the said certificate was denied by the Commission en banc on May 7, 2016.
However, the Provincial Board of Canvasers stil proceeded to proclaim the younger Mayaen as the winning gubernatorial candidate using the certificates of canvass of votes of his late father despite having received the resolution denying her desire to substitute her father.
Subsequently, Thom Tawagen, a former Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) Municipal Federation President, filed a petition for quo warranto before the poll body that sought to question the qualification of the younger Mayaen to be proclaimed as the winning gubernatorial candidate despite the denial of her certificate of candidacy by no less than the Commission en banc which was duly received by the Provincial Board of Canvassers prior to the proclamation of the winning candidates.
The poll body’s First Division then issued a writ of preliminary injunction that barred the younger Mayaen from assuming her post as Provincial governor a day before the simultaneous oath taking of duly elected national and local officials on June 30, 2016 upon the posting of the P100,000 cash bond by the petitioner.
By HENT
