LUCENA CITY—The Commission on Elections (Comelec) en banc has annulled the election and proclamation of Barbara Ruby Talaga as mayor of this city and ordered her to cease and desist from discharging the functions of her office.
The Comelec also ordered Vice Mayor Roderick Alcala to sit as city mayor and asked the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Comelec Region 4 director to implement its resolution promulgated last Friday.
The resolution was signed by Comelec commissioners Rene Sarmiento, Lucenito Tagle, Armando Velasco, Elias Yusoph and Christian Robert Lim, who filed his concurring and separate opinion.
Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes filed his own dissenting opinion.
On January 11 the Comelec Second Division both dismissed Philip Castillo’s petition for the annulment of Talaga’s proclamation and Alcala’s petition in intervention.
Castillo ran for mayor, but lost to Talaga in the May 10, 2010, elections, while Alcala ran for vice mayor along with Castillo.
The Comelec claimed that Resolution 8917, issued on May 13, 2010, giving due course to Talaga’s candidacy is based on a wrong set of facts. It said the resolution erroneously stated that Barbara filed her candidacy on May 5, 2010, as a substitute candidate when, in fact, she filed it the day before, May 4, 2010, at 4:30 p.m. At the time she filed her candidacy, her husband Ramon Talaga, whom she was substituting, had not yet withdrawn his certificate of candidacy (COC) nor was disqualified with finality.
As a consequence, it said Barbara’s filing her COC made her an “additional candidate” not a substitute candidate and in her failure to qualify, a permanent vacancy was created in the position of the city mayor here.
In his dissenting opinion, Brillantes said, “To my mind, what is important is that on election day the people of Lucena City knew the fact of disqualification of Ramon Talaga and the fact of substitution of Ruby Talaga in his stead, and despite of which they freely cast their vote with a clear intent to elect Ruby Talaga as their mayor.”
It can be recalled that Castillo and then-incumbent city mayor Ramon Talaga Jr. both filed their candidacies for city mayor here. On December 5, 2009, Castillo filed a petition for Talaga’s disqualification for having already served three consecutive terms as mayor. On April 19, 2010, the Comelec First Division granted Castillo’s petition and disqualified Talaga, who filed a motion for reconsideration on April 21, but withdrew it on May 4. On the same day, at around 4:30 p.m., Talaga’s wife, Barbara Ruby, filed her own candidacy for mayor. On May 5 the Comelec considered the April 19 resolution disqualifying Talaga as final and executory.
