“There have been significant juridical and political developments in our city that supports the premise that I am legally again in my first term as mayor of Mabalacat as a city,” Morales said in a telephone interview.
Mabalacat was declared a component city in July 2012.
Morales said that his qualification for election is not merely based on the cityhood declaration, but on “significant political and juridical” changes in his city since the last elections.
He cited change in the geographical scope of this city that used to mbe known to cover only about 80 square kilometers.
“But there are areas within the Clark freeport within the territory of Mabalacat which were not initially considered. Otherwise, Mabalacat’s geographical territory would double to as much as 1,600 square kilometers,” he said. Some 60 percent of the freeport is within Mabalacat.
Aeta communities within Clark are also served by the city government, he noted.
Morales also said that his city’s population has significantly risen from about 207,000 in the in 2010 to about 250,000 at present.
Saying that while cityhood by itself does not entitle the incumbent to three successive elections, Morales stressed that these changes would, under the law.
If his claim to a first term as city mayor is upheld, Morales could run for re-election even in the 2019 polls.
Morales’ peculiar fortune was triggered by electoral protests by his political opponent in the series of local elections starting 1995 when he first became mayor.
After three terms that he served in full, Morales ran anew for mayor in 2004 in what could be regarded as a fourth term. He took advantage of a Comelec ruling, rendered rather belatedly, that his opponent was the true winner in the 2001 elections.
Morales argued that his three-successive-terms privilege was interrupted because his supposed third term was not his but that of his opponent, even if the Comelec ruling came just a month before the disputed term was ton end.
When Morales won again in 2004, a supporter of his opponent filed a protest insisting that the mayor was on his fourth term in violation of law.
Again in a belated move, the Comelec ordered Morales on May 9, 2007, to turn over his post to his vice mayor who was able to sit only from May 9 to June 30.
Unfazed, Morales ran again in the next election in 2010 and won, but his election was again challenged. The poll case reached the Supreme Court, which handed down in 2009 a unanimous verdict saying Morales “was not the duly elected mayor of Mabalacat for the 2004-2007 term” and that he did not serve his full term for that period.
The High Court said: “Morales cannot be deemed to have served the full term of 2004- 2007, because he was ordered to vacate his post before the expiration of the term. Morales’ occupancy of the position of mayor of Mabalacat from July 1, 2004, to May 16, 2007, cannot be counted as a term for purposes of computing the three-term limit.”
The tribunal concluded that the mayorship of Morales from July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2010, was “effectively his first term for purposes of the three-term limit rule” for local elective officials.
This meant that since the 2004-2007 term was not truly his, although he served most of it, Morales was serving a first fresh term as mayor from 2007 to 2010 and was entitled to re-election for two more terms or up to the 2016 elections. But Morales said that, because of the significant changes in Mabalacat since it was declared a city in 2012, he is merely on his first term as city mayor and could run for two more successive terms, or up to the 2019 polls.
