AMONG the 12 members of the House of Representatives from Cebu, seven signify the seven districts of the province, two from Cebu City, one every from lone districts Mandaue City and Lapu-Lapu City, and one from the TUCP Party-List, which is organized by Trade Union Congress of the Philippines and Associated Labor Unions (ALU).
Representative Raymond Democrito C. Mendoza, whose late father labor chief Democrito Mendoza based TUCP, represents a sector whose constituency comes from everywhere in the nation, not a selected district of Cebu island, the rationale he is generally not included in some publicized lists of Cebu House members. But he is a Cebuano and ALU is primarily based in Cebu.
Mendoza, born in 1962, is a Bar 1988 lawyer (University of San Carlos) with further research on enterprise administration in Ateneo de Manila University and on labor and occupational security in Turin, Italy. He is married to Cotabato governor, Emmylou-Talino-Mendoza, with two kids. He has held a quantity of nationwide vp positions at TUCP, together with nationwide VPs, successively, for training, nationwide and worldwide affairs, and Mindanao.
ONE OF A FEW. Mendoza may be the one Cebuano who has “beat” the term restrict with out skipping one term.
He has been congressman as ALU-TUCP party-list nominee in, depend them, the 14th, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and 18th Congresses — or 5 legislative phrases: (1) 2007 to 2010, (2) 2010 to 2013, (3) 2013 to 2016, (4) 2016 to 2019, and (5) the present one, 2019 to 2022.
Mendoza has achieved it with out resting for one term. He ought to’ve rested in 2016 and resumed in 2019. But for him, there was no break and there might be no break, not till 2025, the nineteenth Congress. The meter started working solely after the third straight term.
Why 3 phrases weren’t counted
Mendoza did not start his first term in 2007, when the 14th Congress opened, not till later when the Supreme Court determined that party-list members ought to fill the 20 % allotted below the Constitution.
A quantity of party-lists that did not get the required two % of the nationwide vote got a seat. TUCP, which obtained solely 201,386 votes, was amongst them. Under the Party-List System Act of March 3, 1995, a party can have a most of three seats.
Arturo Barrit, TUCP party-list district officer and ALU government assistant, defined to SunStar the remainder of the continuous run: “In the second and third phrases (beginning 2010 and 2013), proclamation was delayed by months for the reason that group of former senator Boy Herrera and Ruben Torres challenged the nominees and provided its personal.” Comelec heard and adjudicated the case, lastly ruling in favor of Mendoza.
In the primary three Congresses, Mendoza, TUCP party-list nominee, didn’t serve full phrases. His camp summed it up thus: “Effectively, whereas Ray sat in 5 Congresses, he can have served, on the finish of the present Congress, solely two full phrases of workplace.”
HOW LONG THE DELAYS. No particular dates for the delays got, solely estimates of the size of time:
For the primary term, the TUCP party-list was proclaimed “midway” or “about one yr and a half” of the 14th Congress. Mendoza’s stint in the second and third phrases (fifteenth and sixteenth Congresses) had been delayed “a number of months” as a result of of the rump group’s problem. Art Barrit mentioned litigation at Comelec took “two years and 6 months” of Mendoza’s second term and “seven months” of his third term.
NOBODY COMPLAINED? It is not recognized if the courts ever resolved the problem of term restrict. What the Comelec adjudicated, which Barrit mentioned went up the Supreme Court, will need to have been the Herrera group’s declare to the House seat. Perhaps no person complained towards any violation of term restrict, Provincial Election Officer Lionel Marco Castellano advised SunStar.
Another supply mentioned that whereas Mendoza may not have served all the interval of every of the primary three phrases, it is uncertain if the funds and perks for his seat had been correspondingly slashed for the time and work not served. The shortfall in term enabled him to beat the constitutional restrict even because it did not essentially cut back compensation and privileges.
The ban on 4th term
The Constitution bans “greater than three consecutive phrases” for elective officers, besides barangay officers. The Local Government Code of 1991 repeats the prohibition. The Supreme Court in one case mentioned the term restrict goals to finish “monopolization of energy” and forestall elected officers from “breeding proprietary curiosity in their place” and to “improve the individuals’s freedom of alternative.”
The operative phrase is “consecutive,” or successive or steady.
Which means, the Supreme Court says in one other case, the ban doesn’t apply if the service is interrupted. The term restrict is damaged by “a relaxation interval throughout which the native elective official steps down from workplace and ceases to train energy or authority” inside a selected native authorities unit.
Rest interval, election protest
What the excessive courtroom calls the remainder interval applies to the term-limited official, not his or her partner, baby, or another relative by blood or affinity. And it is for just one election. Winning the subsequent election after his/her one-term relaxation will give the prospect to undergo one other three-term, nine-year consecutive stint — and so forth and so forth until dying components her or him from the workplace, with the pool of kinfolk to maintain the workplace inside the household or clan.
A notable exception is an election protest, which may be thought-about, the SC mentioned, an involuntary interruption. The legislation prohibits voluntary renunciation of the workplace to go across the term restrict.
In Abundo vs Comelec (GR #201716) — which Barrit mentioned TUCP relied on in Mendoza’s case — Catanduanes Mayor Abelardo Abundo Sr. argued that he did not full his three consecutive phrases as a result of his rival was proclaimed the winner in 2004. Abundo protested the consequence and gained however he served solely the remaining one yr of the term. The SC thought-about Abundo’s three-term stint (2001, 2004 and 2007) as having been damaged in 2004.
Mendoza argued alongside the identical line of “interruption”: as a result of of the delay in giving extra seats for party-lists in the House and blocking strikes of rivals in Comelec and the courts, he was in a position to serve solely components of the primary three phrases.
Not if preventive suspension
In comparability, the circumstances of then Cebu City councilors Alvin Arcilla and Sisenio “Bebs” Andales reaffirmed the SC jurisprudence that preventive suspension can’t interrupt the three-term restrict. They ran for reelection in 2019 and handily gained in Cebu City’s north district however had been taken out from the roster of winners by the rule on term restrict.
Comelec, which declared them ineligible, used as foundation SC choices that say the exception doesn’t apply because the suspended officers did not lose their workplace however had been simply barred quickly from exercising their duties. [Seares: Arcilla case, June 17, 2019. Avoiding term limit, October 21, 2018]
In the Mendoza case, the congressman claimed he had not assumed workplace but as a result of of delay in the allocation of his seat and, later, the opposing declare of his rivals.
