MIRIAM SLAMS “TIMID” COMELEC

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago said she will appeal by certiorari to the Supreme Court the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) resolution refusing to ban campaign billboards by presidential wannabes.

“The Comelec resolution is timid, literal, and non-responsive,” Santiago said.

Santiago criticized the Comelec for its descriptive rather than analytical style of interpreting the law, calling it a glaring deficiency.

“In this sense, it is not only old-fashioned, but also calcified,” she said.

The senator accused the Comelec of abdicating its constitutional responsibility because it did not recommend to Congress effective measures to prevent election malpractices as required by the Constitution.

“The Comelec says a premature campaign is ignoble. But in effect, they don’t want to offend anybody, so they’ll just pass the buck to the Supreme Court,” the senator said.

Santiago also criticized the Comelec’s “muddled thinking” when the Commission agreed that the issue involves two conflicting provisions of the Election Code on the one hand, while claiming that the law is allegedly clear on the other.

According to Santiago, the rules of statutory construction exist so that a primary agency like the Comelec can interpret the law without throwing everything to the Supreme Court.

“That is the primary-jurisdiction doctrine. They blithely ignored it. And what happened to my equal-protection argument? They were fainthearted, so they ignored it, too,” she said.

Santiago said that she was very sad and disturbed by the Comelec’s refusal to administer and enforce the law. “Their smug attitude just makes me feel tired. I get depressed with this kind of self-righteous passive resistance to reform in our country,” the senator said.

Santiago’s appeal will be handled by her law office since the senator will be busy until November with her campaign for a seat in the International Court of Justice.