SC settles leadership row in teachers party-list

April 26, 2013 5:29pm



The Supreme Court has settled the dispute between two factions fighting over rights to represent a party-list group in the coming May elections.

In an 11-page decision penned by Associate Justice Arturo Brion on April 16, the high court en banc said the group of Jonathan dela Cruz and Ed Vincent Albano was the rightful representative of Abakada party-list, composed of academic and non-academic personnel of educational institutions.

The high court junked a petition filed by the party-list group's founder Samson Alcantara and group officer Pedro Dabu Jr, and upheld a Commission on Elections (Comelec) resolution siding with Dela Cruz and Albano.

Incidentally, Alcantara is currently vying for a seat in the Senate.

In its resolution, the poll body said it recognized the party-list group's earlier decision to oust Alcantara as president of the group, as well as other officers and members including Dabu, Romeo Robiso, Lope Feble, Noel Tiampong and Jose Floro Crisologo.

"The petitioners failed to account for the group's actual membership at least as of 2009, five years after Abakada was accredited and the year immediately prior to the Supreme Assembly held in February 2010 and the party-list elections of May 2010," the SC said.

The high court said contrary to Alcantara's claim, the Comelec has the authority "to pass upon the question of who, among the legitimate officers of the partylist group, are entitled to exercise the rights and privileges granted to a partylist group under the law."

In their petition, Alcantara and Dabu said the only ones who can call for an election of officers are the ones who have the "power to call the Supreme Assembly," which according to the two were them.

But the high court ruled: "If the validity of the Supreme Assembly would completely depend on the person who calls the meeting and on the person who sends the notice of the meeting --who are petitioners Alcantara and Debu themselves--then the petitioners would be able to perpetuate themselves in power in violation of the very constitution whose violation they now cite."

In December last year, Alcantara had already asked but failed to convince the Supreme Court to order the stopping of the broadcast of the political advertisements of his senatorial rivals.

Proclaiming himself as an anti-political dynasty advocate and an underdog, Alcantara is a law professor at the University of Santo Tomas. He also belongs to the Social Justice Society political party.

He finished law at the Manuel L. Quezon University School of Law in 1957 and placed 3rd in the Bar Examinations of the same year. — Mark Merueñas/KBK, GMA News