Monina Dumaual of EdGE2010, the only University Student Government (USG) officer who is from the political party Alyansang Tapat sa Lasalista (Tapat), was also the only Legislative Assembly (LA) representative who voted for the resolution to open the Election Code.
The resolution was authored by the Rules and Policies Committee of the LA a day before their Dec. 3 meeting.
The Judiciary wants to include the chief magistrate in the Election Board. Currently, only the University Student Government (USG) president, Commission on Elections (COMELEC) chair and the Dean for Student Affairs compose the board. The inclusion of the chief magistrate in the Election Board requires the opening of the Election Code.
However, the Election Code is locked until 2012, and it will be unconstitutional to open it without a valid reason. The LA made it clear that it will only be opened if drastic errors in the provisions are needed to be revised.
The Judiciary proposed to include the chief magistrate in the Election Board because of the unclear separation of powers of the new government. This was evident during Freshmen Election (FE).
It can be recalled that Tapat appealed their disqualification case to the Judiciary and the latter lifted the case. When COMELEC, however, appealed to the Election Board, they overturned the Judiciary’s initial decision.
The role of the Judiciary is to appease any concerns the different members of the University may have towards the USG and even COMELEC. The Election Board was still able to overturn the decision of the Judiciary, which only undermined the Judiciary’s role in the election process.
Tapat also wants to remove the provision that requires a candidate to have 12 units per term during his or her stay as an elected officer. Francis Roque, Tapat president, explains that the 12 units per term requirement does not assure the students that their officers will complete their tenure.
Kate Ngo, BNE2011 Batch Vice President, just recently resigned from her post last term, despite having fulfilled the 12 units per term requirement, to join an exchange student program. Bea Marquez has also expressed her plans of resigning to also join an exchange student program.
COMELEC actually supports the opening of the code to clarify and prevent any future misunderstandings between the political parties and COMELEC.
Among the clarifications that need to be addressed are the grounds for an election offense, the re-election specifications, and the measurement of the validity of an election. Kevin Tuason, College of Engineering magistrate, also wants to increase the CGPA of candidates from the present 1.75 to 2.0.
Melviely Sy, LA representative of BNE 2011, shared that “the resolution was heavily debated in the LA if we would open the election code or not.” For the LA, the reasons the Judiciary provided were invalid or could easily be solved through additional provisions in the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signed by the political parties and COMELEC. The LA voted against the opening of the code.
The Judiciary expressed their dismay since the LA and the different proponents did not inform their office about the resolution drafting and the following LA meeting.
Members of the Rules and Policies Committee voted against the resolution.
Rico Locsin, Iisang Tugon sa Laban ng Panahon (Santugon) president, also agrees that some provisions of the code are not clear and it could only be addressed by opening the code. However, he disagrees with the reasons presented by the Judiciary and Tapat, their rival party, since he fought against such amendments when was still an LA rep.
Roque of Tapat was the main proponent of the resolution to open the election code. He argues that if the LA will resort to supplementary guidelines and added provisions in the MOAs until the lock period of two years ends, inconsistencies may transpire.
He furthers that the right process to accommodate important changes is only through opening the election code.
The Election Code was last revised February of this year to accommodate the provisions brought by the new form of the government.
