Lakas-Kampi convention illegal - Comelec lawyer

Malacañang’s usual go-between to the Comelec is livid. He is telling two Palace gofers in the poll body to muzzle their legal division chief Atty. Ferdinand Rafanan. The latter’s continued talking is embarrassing political bunglers in Malacañang, so must be stopped.

What got the Palace factotum’s goat? Simple: Rafanan’s alertness. The lawyer had noticed an illegality in last Wednesday’s Lakas-Kampi convention, and told the press about it. In particular, he had said that the admin’s merged parties broke the Comelec rule for conventions to be held only from Oct. 21 to Nov. 19. A commissioners’ en banc had set the rule in fulfillment of the Omnibus Election Code, to limit divisive campaigns to a minimum. For flouting the election law, Rafanan further had stated, the attendees can be imprisoned for one to six years. Too, the presidential and vice presidential candidates they had proclaimed, and who accepted their nomination, may be disqualified from running. It would be disastrous. The admin that dominates half the Senate, four-fifths of the House, and nearly all governorships and mayorships will have no standard bearers. The advertised Gibo Teodoro-Ronnie Puno ticket would be stillborn. All because six Malacañang bumblers had ill timed the convention.

It bears watching if Rafanan can be shut up. He has had scrapes with superiors before. For speaking his mind out in 2004, the forceful Comelec chief then, Ben Abalos, had him thrown to Siberia postings, yet he was unruffled. Upon Abalos’s resignation due to the NBN-ZTE scam, Rafanan was unbound. The new chairman, Jose Melo, named him chief-lawyer. Then as now, Rafanan has been vocal about the need for the poll body to regain its credibility. To do this, he says, the Comelec must whip politicians and parties into line. Instilling in them discipline and obedience to election laws is Rafanan’s aim as legal division head.

Comelec control over politicos is also what Lakas co-founders are invoking in their protest against the merger with Kampi. Whether the poll commissioners will heed their call — and that of the Comelec’s own top counsel — has yet to be seen. Led by Joe de Venecia, the Lakas originals argue that the merger is illegal on two main grounds. First, it violated the Lakas by-laws, as approved by Comelec, of requiring a general assembly to ratify any tie-up with any party. No such assembly was convened. Worse, the very application for Comelec approval of the Lakas-Kampi fusion defies the Constitution. It gives sole power to appoint members of the National Executive Committee to one person — President Gloria Arroyo as national chairman. This, de Venecia et al aver, runs counter to democracy and representative government that politicians must promote.

Lakas-Kampi’s holding of a rump convention complicates things. This early the clumsy organizers are trying to lie their way out of a lawsuit. Supposedly what they held Wednesday was not a convention but a mere straw vote, so they broke no law. Fifty attendees of the 65-man National Executive Committee only mulled between presidential wannabes Teodoro and Bayani Fernando, is all. Final decision allegedly will be made in a real convention of all party members within the allowed period for such event next month. The convention’s true minutes will not bear that out, though. For, at one point Wednesday, Fernando had demanded that the selection be made not by national officers alone but a general assembly. On record the attendees voted him down, then proceeded to secret balloting. Fernando is smarting from the rebuff by a party he has served loyally for years. Lakas-Kampi merger pushers now run the risk of him testifying as state witness against their violating the Election Code. Teodoro and Puno face the threat of not being able to run at all.

Puno has labeled de Venecia’s group as “washouts”. But it seems that time is on their side. One by one Lakas originals are filing cases in Comelec against the unauthorized use of the party name for the merger. At the rate of proceedings, the poll body will take two months to hear each argument. By then merger members would be hard-pressed to file candidacies under duly accredited parties before the Nov. 30 deadline. Even if, on prodding of the Palace gofers, the Comelec upholds the Lakas-Kampi shotgun wedding, the damage would have been done. Lakas and Kampi members at the local levels irreparably would have squabbled about who can run and who must give way. There would be expensive intra-party campaigns for the merger leaders to mediate, much more bankroll. Teodoro-Puno would have to run under an emasculated Kampi, if at all. De Venecia’s group would have the last laugh. And Rafanan might have the challenge of his life, historically prosecuting an admin party and mighty leaders for trashing the law.

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“People who appear unlovely can become lovely — if only someone begins to love them.” Shafts of Life, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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