Clarylyn A. Legaspi et al. v. COMELEC

 

Clarylyn A. Legaspi et al. v. COMELEC

G.R. No. 264661

July 30, 2024

 

FACTS:

                COMELEC received on May 27, 2022 a document entitled “APELA PARA SA MANO-MANONG PAGBILANG MULI NG MGA BOTO SA PROBINSYA NG PANGASINAN” (APELA). The COMELEC responded by saying that although it was signed by several persons from different barangays and municipalities of the Province of Pangasinan, it did not specifically state the position involved and other details required for an election protest. Please be reminded that if you are contesting the elections or returns of an elective regional, provincial or city official, the petition should be filed directly with the Commission, through the Electoral Contests and Adjudication Department (ECAD), by any candidate who was voted for in the same office and who received the second or third highest number of votes, among others, as reflected in the Statement of Votes. On the other hand, if the instant election contest involves municipal officials, the verified petition should be directly filed before the proper Regional Trial Court also by a candidate who was voted for the same office and who received the second or third highest number of votes. Atty. Fabia (as spokesperson for the affected voters) sought reconsideration. He said among others, that the people’s right to know proceeds from their sovereign right to vote because without knowing how their votes were counted would render their right to vote useless. The people’s exercise of their sovereign available always to public cognizance.

ISSUE:

1.       Whether or not the verifications vis-à-vis the instant petition are defective;

2.       Whether or not Legaspi, et al. have locus standi;

3.       Whether or not the instant petition can be classified as a class suit;

4.       Whether or not there is an actual case or controversy here;

5.       Whether or not Legaspi, et al.’s right to freedom of information was violated.

6.       Whether or not certiorari or mandamus can lie.

HELD:

1.       No. The Court is at pain to determine how they were able to have personal knowledge of the following facts: the alleged unusual speed of the transmission of the electoral results from the VCMs to COMELEC’s transparency server on May 9, 2022, since they evidently were not present during the VCM’s transmission and had only monitored the election results on social media, on television, and on COMELEC’s website (i.e., they were not present nearby any VCM or at respondent’s headquarters housing the transparency server during the said transmission of results); the observations of technical experts and international observers vis-à-vis the May 9, 2022 elections, which they only came to know of via social media or sources online that are unauthenticated for evidentiary purposes; and their actual participation in the signing of the APELA, since again, the signature pages were not submitted as part of the records of the instant petition. Legaspi, et al. clearly do not have personal knowledge of the circumstances that prompted their fears and speculations regarding the results on the May 9, 2022 National and Local Elections. There is no indication that any of them were intimately connected or concerned with the actual transmission of the tallies of the VCMs in their respective polling precincts all the way to COMELEC’s servers.

 

2.       No. A mere general interest in a controversy that is actually shared by the whole citizenry is not specific enough to constitute locus standi, especially if the injury is not specified. Legaspi, et al. have specifically stated in the instant petition that they do not intend to unseat any elected official, and that they do not intend to have any winner proclaimed. They simply pray that they be given an opportunity to have some closure with regard to what they see as an automated election riddled with anomalies by a full manual audit of all VCMs utilized in the Province of Pangasinan on May 9, 2022.

 

3.       No. Section 12 Rule 3 of the ROC defines a class suit as follows: when the subject matter of the controversy is one of common or general interest to many persons so numerous that it is impracticable to join all as parties, a number of them which the court finds to be sufficiently numerous as to fully protect the interests of all concerned may sue or defend for the benefit of all. Any party in interest shall have the right to intervene to protect his individual interest. Here, they allege that they are representing more than 71,000 voters from the Province of Pangasinan who signed the APELA and had the same filed before COMELEC for appropriate action. They failed to attach the APELA’s signature pages for the Court’s verification. The Court, thus, cannot make an adequate determination as to whether the parties affected are so numerous that it is impracticable to join them all to the present proceedings, or even as to whether they are sufficiently numerous or representantive of the supposed class they represent, or that they can fully protect the interests of all concerned.

 

4.       No. It is too much of a stretch for the Court to hold that the constitutional right of suffrage encompasses the supposed right of the sovereign electorate in a locality to have an entire election conducted thereat fully and manually recounted based on unsubstantiated surmises and unfound conjectures that supposedly shadow the said election’s conduct and results. This supposed right exists neither in the statue books nor in jurisprudence, and for the Court to recognize such right here would be a dangerous tread into the forbidden waters of judicial legislation. Here, there is no allegation that a great number of VCMs rejected or failed to read and count the ballots fed into them, or that an entire group of clustered polling precincts failed to transmit their results, or that an entire barangay, municipality, or city was not included in the provincial results of the May 9, 2022 National and Local Elections.

 

5.       No. Such a generally worded, overly broad, and vague reference to ballot boxes and SD cards in an addendum to an already confusing request cannot rightly be considered to have been a proper demand for FOI here. Also, even if they mentioned in their prayer that they are indeed interested in gaining access to the transmission logs, they are not actually requesting that they personally or by proxy be granted access to the same; they ask that the same be submitted to the Court with no reference to any purpose therefor. This is no longer an FOI request but virtually a motion to compel discovery filed before a tribunal that is not a trier of facts.

 

6.       No. Not only has it been established that COMELEC actually id not deny Legaspi et al.’s request; it had also not been given any opportunity to accede to any FOI-related request, since Legaspi, et al. failed to avail of the remedies available in COMELEC’s FOI Manual. Moreover, it cannot be faulted for being confused with their requests, since their own wording muddled matters to a regrettably absurd degree. Clearly, COMELEC could not have committed grave abuse of discretion when it did not actually understand what proper relief they were seeking. “The burden is on petitioner to prove that the respondent tribunal committed not merely a reversible error but also a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction.” Here, Legaspi, et al. have obviously not sufficiently discharged said burden.

 

As for mandamus, no statutory basis exists for their plea for a full manual recount of the provincial results of a national/local election. This right only pertains to losing candidates who have filed election protests for the revision of ballots they have identified a objectionable. Not even the generally worded declaration of policy in RA 9369 can properly be the basis for such action by respondent. The proper forum for the grant of such a right to the public lies in Congress, and not the courts.