Recent SC verdicts reflect positively on Padaca case

ANGELES CITY – Presidential election lawyer Romulo Macalintal expressed yesterday confidence that beleaguered Isabela Gov. Grace Padaca will survive the Commission on Election’s move to oust her after the Supreme Court en banc stopped recently the poll body en banc from enforcing a “Padaca type” resolution on a similar case in Palawan.

Macalintal said the similar case involved El Nido, Palawan Mayor Leonor Corral who won by 1,306 votes over her rival Ernest Fernandez. Later the regional trial court in Puerto Princesa invalidated some 6,000 votes in favor of Corral on grounds that they were allegedly written by one or two persons as it declared Fernandez the winner by 678 votes.

Macalintal said the Supreme Court en banc, in a resolution issued last Friday, stopped the Comelec from ousting Corral based on the decision of the RTC.

Corral, through her counsels Macalintal and Sixto Brillantes, had argued before the high court that the verdict of the RTC and the Comelec “were issued with very grave abuse of discretion.”

Macalintal also said Corral pointed out to the Supreme Court “the arbitrariness and grave abuse of discretion of the Comelec in sustaining the trial court’s distorted decision of invalidating 6,000 ballots which is clearly impossible to be accomplished by only one person.

“I hope the Comelec could be properly guided by this Supreme Court resolution in the Corral case when it

hears the motion to implement its decision in the case of Governor Grace Padaca”, Macalintal said.

He said that “there were similar cases where the Supreme Court stopped the implementation of Comelec decisions in election protest with highly questionable rulings.”

He cited the case of Camarines Norte Gov. Jesus Typoco whose ouster order by the Comelec was also prevented last March 5 by the Supreme Court which noted that the order was based on “spurious documents”.

Macalintal said that in the case of Typoco, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) had confirmed that “there is reason to believe that the falsification and the switching of the election documents inside the Comelec are collective acts and omissions by concerned government officers and private individuals aimed at awarding unwarranted benefits to a candidate at the expense of causing injury to Typoco and the Comelec as an institution.”

“To date, I have not heard from the Comelec what it did on this NBI report”, Macalintal said.

Macalintal also cited a case involving a vice mayor in Cavite whose ouster by the Comelec was also prevented by the Supreme Court last Aug. 25. In the case, the Comelec also invalidated some 8,000 ballots allegedly also written by one person.

“With all these present developments in election cases decided by the Comelec, I am very very confident that Gov. Grace Padaca will not be unseated and will finish her term till June 30, 2010. And I look forward to her reelection in the forthcoming May 10, 2010 gubernatorial race in the Province of Isabela,” Macalintal