DIGEST/SUZEYNE KIM GARCIA/JOSE CONCEPCION, JR. V. COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS

 JOSE CONCEPCION, JR. V. COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS

G.R. No. 178624

June 30, 2009

 

FACTS:

On January 5, 2007, the National Citizen's Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) filed a Petition for Accreditation to Conduct the Operation Quick Count with the COMELEC. The present petitioner - then the incumbent Punong Barangay of Barangay Forbes Park, Makati City - was one of the signatories of the NAMFREL petition in his capacity as the National Chairman of NAMFREL. COMELEC promulgated Resolution No. 7798 which prohibits barangay officials from being members of the Board of Election Inspectors or as official watcher of each duly registered major political party or any socio-civic, religious, professional or any similar organization of which they may be members. The COMELEC ruled on NAMFREL's petition for accreditation on April 2, 2007 in the assailed Resolution (April 2, 2007 Resolution), conditionally granting NAMFREL's petition, stipulating that the accreditation is granted subject to the condition that the organization be re-organized and that the accreditation will be deemed automatically revoked in case petitioner violates any of the provisions and conditions set forth.

 

NAMFREL reorganized and filed a “Manifestation and Request for Re-examination” which included NAMFREL’s request for a re-examination without further arguments of the April 2, 2007 Resolution as it specifically affected the petitioner's membership with NAMFREL. In this Manifestation and Request for Re-examination, NAMFREL outlined its various objections and concerns on the legality or validity of Resolution 7798. The COMELEC denied the request to re-examine and NAMFREL did not question it.

 

The petitioner filed a petition for certiorari under Rule 65, ostensibly questioning the COMELEC's April 2, 2007 Resolution, but actually raising issues with respect to Resolution 7798. He was not a party to the resolution nor did he filed the petition as inrvenor in his petition, or in NAMFREL’s Manifestation and Request for Examination.

 

ISSUE:

WON the use of Rule 65 by the petition to question the COMELEC’s April 2, 2007 Resolution proper.

 

RULING:

No, the petition is not proper and is a blatant misuse of Rule 65.

 

The petitioner has no personality to file a petition for certiorari to address an adjudicatory resolution of the COMELEC in which he was not a party to, and where the direct party, NAMFREL, does not even question the assailed resolution. He is not a party-in-interest who can directly assail the COMELEC’s April 2, 2007 Resolution in an original Rule 65 petition.

 

The requirement of personality or interest is sanctioned no less by Section 7, Article IX of the Constitution which provides that a decision, order, or ruling of a constitutional commission may be brought to this Court on certiorari by the aggrieved party within thirty days from receipt of a copy thereof.  This requirement is repeated in Section 1, Rule 65 of the Rules of Court, which applies to petitions for certiorari under Rule 64 of decisions, orders or rulings of the constitutional commissions pursuant to Section 2, Rule 64. Section 1, Rule 65 essentially provides that a person aggrieved by any act of a tribunal, board or officer exercising judicial or quasi-judicial functions rendered without or in excess of jurisdiction or with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction may file a petition for certiorari.

 

The second fatal defect lies in the petition's thrust; it opened with and professed to be an express challenge to the COMELEC's adjudicatory April 2, 2007 Resolution, but in its arguments solely attacks and prays for the partial nullity of COMELEC Resolution 7798 issued in the exercise of the COMELEC's rule making power. This approach is fatally defective because the petition thereby converts an express challenge of an adjudicatory resolution - made without the requisite standing - into a challenge for the nullity of a regulation through an original Rule 65 petition for certiorari.

 

A stand-alone challenge to the regulation could have been made through appropriate mediums, particularly through a petition for declaratory relief with the appropriate Regional Trial Court under the terms of Rule 63 of the Rules of Court, or through a petition for prohibition under Rule 65 to prevent the implementation of the regulation, as the petitioner might have found appropriate to his situation. As already mentioned, a challenge can likewise be made in the course of validly contesting an adjudicatory order of the COMELEC. Such challenge, however, cannot be made in an original petition for certiorari under Rule 65 dissociated from any COMELEC action made in the exercise of its quasi-judicial functions.