MANILA, Philippines – A youth-led election watchdog on Tuesday, March 25, revived a petition seeking to declare the registration of the Duterte Youth party-list group void from the beginning for allegedly misrepresenting the youth.
On Tuesday, petitioners represented by the Kabataan Tayo ang Pag-asa (KTAP) electoral watchdog group filed with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) an urgent motion to resolve a 2019 petition seeking to cancel or declare nullity of the party-list registration of the Duty to Energize the Republic Through Enlightenment of the Youth Sectoral Party List Organization (Duterte Youth).
The petitioners are youth leaders Reeya Beatrice Magtalas, Abigail Aleli Tan, Raainah Punzalan, and Aundell Ross Angcos, the same petitioners from the 2019 filing.
Grounds
Angcos recapped the grounds of their old petitions — how former first nominee and National Youth Commission chief Ronald Cardema was overaged in representing the youth, and that Duterte Youth allegedly committed material representation in affirming that Cardema was a legitimate representative of the youth.
The Party-List System Act mandates that representatives of the youth sector must be 25 to 30 years old on election day, but Cardema was 34 years old when he filed for his certificate of nomination and acceptance with the Comelec.
The Comelec resolved the group’s first petition, ruling him ineligible to sit in Congress as a youth representative. However, the second petition seeking to cancel the registration of Cardema’s group remained in limbo for over five years.
“‘Yung mga original petitioners, dati youth pa lang kami, ngayon hindi na kami youth, katulad ni Ronald Cardema. So sana naman, ang hiling namin sa Comelec, lalo na ngayon, na medyo nagbago ng ihip ng hangin at mukhang mas matunog na ang justice ngayong panahon na ito. At sana totoo ito at hindi lang ito political. Sana i-resolve na ito at tanggalin na mga pekeng representative ng mga kabataan sa Kongreso,” said Angcos.
(We, the original petitioners, were also part of the youth. Now we aren’t, just like Ronald Cardema. So we hope to ask the Comelec, especially now that justice seems to be working these days, that this is [resolved] for real and not just for politics. We hope to have this resolved and remove fake representatives of the youth in Congress.)
The petitioners believe that that the Duterte Youth’s registration is void ab initio, or void from the beginning, since they are not a legitimate representative of the youth. They also alleged that the group failed to meet requirements of publication and public hearing.
KTAP national convenor Brell Lacerna also noted one of the original grounds that Duterte Youth allegedly advocated violence or unlawful means to achieve its goals.
“Ang ginawa ng Duterte Youth sa mga kabataan ay paglaganap ng disinformation at terror-tagging sa mga kabataan upang palabnawin, kaligtaan ang mga lehitimong panawagan ng mga kabataan,” said Lacerna.
(Duterte Youth engaged in proliferating disinformation and terror-tagging of youth as to water down or forget the legitimate calls of the youth.)
Stalled
According to Angcos, the last action in the case was a hearing on December 18, 2019, which Duterte Youth representatives did not attend. The petition alleged that this meant that the respondent had “zero evidence” to counter the charge.
The Comelec Second Division, which handled the case back then, ordered the parties to submit memoranda within 10 days after the hearing. However, there was no more action after that.
No less than former Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. served as a counsel for the petitioners, but he died in August 2020 without seeing the case resolved.
In an interview with reporters on the same day of the filing, Comelec Chairman George Garcia agreed that it was time to resolve the case. As for the delay, he pointed to the changing compositions of the divisions. This case was already up for decision, but because of retirements, it had to be re-raffled
“This time, now that the commission is complete, we will take this opportunity to resolve immediately before the election these types of cases,” Garcia said in a mix of English and Filipino.
Duterte Youth was among the party-list groups most preferred by Filipinos in a February survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations. – Rappler.com