THE ROLE OF LAWYERS IN ELECTION CASES

ABSTRACT:

The usual disputes in Philippine election law pertain to pre-proclamation controversies

and election protests. This paper examines two (2) certain topics: First, the role of lawyers in an
election; Second, role of election lawyers to strengthen our fight against election fraud which has
a positive association with the intensity of civil conflict. The first topic pertains to a lawyer of a
candidate who has the duty to give a proper advice or legal counseling for the anticipation of
candidacy and during its conduct while the second topic involves the role of every election
lawyers as a social responsibility in the conduct of an election in the Philippines. The first
involves private practice of a lawyer, while the second refers to public duty as an election
lawyer.

DISCUSSIONS:

The Philippines has universal direct suffrage at age 18 and older to elect the president,
vice president (who runs independently), and most of the seats in the bicameral legislature,
consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate; a minority of House members known
as sectoral representatives are appointed by the president. Elections are held not just for national
leadership but also for representation at the provincial and local levels. In the last elections in
May 2004, some 74 percent of eligible voters participated, but the process was marred by
violence and numerous irregularities, which the political opposition continues to protest, even
calling for the president’s impeachment.

Elections in the Philippines are the arena in which the country's elite families compete for
political power. The wealthiest clans contest national and provincial offices. Families of lesser
wealth compete for municipal offices. In the barangays, where most people are equally poor,
election confers social prestige but no real power or money. *

The 1987 constitution establishes a new system of elections. The terms of representatives
are reduced from four years to three, and the presidential term is lengthened from four years to
six. Senators also serve a six-year term. The Constitution's transitory provisions are scheduled to
expire in 1992, after which there is to be a three-year election cycle. Suffrage is universal at age
eighteen. The constitution established a Commission on Elections that is empowered to supervise
every aspect of campaigns and elections. It is composed of a chairperson and six commissioners,
who cannot have been candidates for any position in the immediately preceding elections. A
majority of the commissioners must be lawyers, and all must be college-educated. They are
appointed by the president with the consent of the Commission on Appointments and serve a
single seven-year term. The Commission on Elections enforces and administers all election laws
and regulations and has original jurisdiction over all legal disputes arising from disputed results.

The final decision on all legislative elections rests with the electoral tribunals of the
Senate and House of Representatives. Each electoral tribunal is composed of nine members,
three of whom are members of the Supreme Court designated by the chief justice. The remaining
six are members of the Senate or the House, chosen on the basis of proportional representation
from parties in the chamber.
FIRST: Role of Lawyer in Giving Advise to a Candidate in an Election

In the past election in the Philippines, many political candidates, both national and local,
had faced disqualification cases and electoral protest. The recent cases were the citizenship case
of Senator Grace Poe and vice presidential electoral protest between of Bong-bong Marcos
against Leni Robredo, a declared winner during 2016 National Election. Even in local
government there are so much cases to speak of.

Consequently, a candidate should anticipate one or more complaints will be filed alleging
a violation of election laws and grounds for disqualifications, for instance violation of
citizenship, residency requirements, vote buying and others. Legal counsel is necessary to
rapidly respond to and rebut such claims and provide a legal explanation that can be related to
the media in order to avoid any appearance of impropriety. For legal counsel to serve such a role,
however, it is important they have an ongoing relationship with the candidate and campaign so as
to minimize their response time, including the preparation of any legal documents they may need
to file. Campaign complaints can sometimes lead to formal or informal investigations and
enforcement proceedings, which will require experienced legal advice and representation.

Candidates seeking public office typically are required to file a Personal Financial
Disclosure Statement. For candidates seeking public office for the first time, the Financial
Disclosure will serve as an introduction to the candidate's financial and business life. Expect it to
be scrutinized. A candidate who has sizeable holdings or complicated financial arrangements
must be certain that disclosure is accurate, and it is important to prepare follow-up materials on
subjects likely to attract inquiries. Legal counsel should work closely with the candidate's
accountant and/or investment advisers, providing them with the guidance and instructions they
need for preparing the financial disclosure. In this regard, accountants and financial advisers
sometimes make the mistake of assuming that financial disclosure statements are akin to tax
returns and only require the disclosure of information relating to taxable income. This can result
in significant reporting omissions. A candidate's failure to submit a complete and accurate
financial disclosure not only creates a serious political issue but can lead to legal liability for
filing a false statement with the government.

SECOND: Role of Election Lawyers and Election Irregularities

The Philippine election lawyers normally render service to the client by seeing to it that
the candidates’ action are well within the ambit of law. In addition, they ensure that before,
during and after the election process, the candidate’s legal rights are protected. Furthermore,
during the counting and canvassing of votes, Philippine election lawyers play huge roles in
upholding the sanctity of the ballot box and the true vote of the people. Thereafter, they may file
protests or cases against erring individuals for irregularities in the casting, counting and
canvassing of votes. The paper concludes by proposing criteria for assessing electoral systems
and suggesting that election lawyers should engage not only in usual disputes and irregularities
in an election but more deeply on election fraud happening in the country.
 Philippine elections are often marred by violence, fraud and irregularities. Polling
stations run out of ballots; ballot boxes go missing; names of legitimate voters aren’t not on
voting lists; dead people remain on lists that have not been updated; stations run out of ink that
keeps voters from voting twice. There have been allegations that computers have been
manipulated to change results.
Vote buying is common. "Election in the Philippines function something like a national
welfare system," Mimi Swartz wrote in New Yorker. Carlos H. Conde wrote in the New York
Times, “Here, politicians have no qualms about using what critics call "guns, gold and goons."
Votes are still being counted by hand, while vote-counters are appointed by politicians who are
also candidates. Vote-buying is said to be rampant - a charge frequently leveled by defeated
candidates - and it is widely reported that many ordinary voters have come to expect bribes from
politicians. The padding and shaving of votes - the practice of which Arroyo is now accused - is
also apparently prevalent.

“Every election has brought complaints of cheating. Sulay Alipa, a former mayor of
Bongao town in the southern Philippines, says he was cheated in the 2004 elections. The
cheating took on many forms, he said by telephone. Some towns in his province had 98 percent
voter turnout rates, which, he said, was statistically improbable. In one town, 10,000 were listed
as voters when there were only 6,000 people of voting age. The teachers who did the counting,
Alipa said, were appointed by officials who were also candidates, opening the way to fraud. And
because elections here are often accompanied by violence, the police and military are usually put
under the commission's control during the voting, which also raises the likelihood of fraud. In
past elections, state security forces were involved in snatching ballot boxes or preventing people
from voting

The above discussions can be considered common irregularities that are happening in the
Philippines. However, as we go along with our discussions we can deeply understand that there
is a more serious problem that associates the election irregularities – it is the intensity of civil
conflict.

Election Fraud and Post-Election Conflict: Evidence from the Philippines

Civil conflict is a major impediment to development and poverty-reduction (World Bank,

2012). Its negative effects include reductions in economic growth (Abadie and Gardeazabal,
2003), educational attainment (Leon, 2012), height-for-age Z-scores (Akresh et al., 2012), and
birth weight (Mansour and Rees, 2012). Despite the large potential gains from ending or
preventing civil conflict, its causes are not well understood. Academics and practitioners point to
electoral fraud as an important cause of internal conflicts, especially in the developing world. For
instance, Callen and Long (2012) argue that fraudulent elections can exacerbate civil conflict by
undermining the democratic process and increasing popular support for non-democratic, and
potentially violent, political actors; a recently published World Bank report notes that “leaders
lacking trust in ‘winner-take-all’ scenarios may manipulate [election] outcomes, which can
trigger serious violence” (World Bank, 2012).1 While there is strong evidence of a positive
association between election fraud and civil conflict (Weidmann and Callen, 2013), this
association could easily be due to difficult-to-measure cultural, historical, or institutional factors.
Further, studies show that narrow incumbent victories were associated with a substantial increase
in post-election conflict casualties, but were essentially unrelated to pre-election casualties. It is,
of course, possible that narrow incumbent victories led to post-election conflict for reasons
unrelated to fraud. For instance, opponents of the status quo may have hoped to affect change
through the electoral process and turned to violence when the election outcome was not to their
liking. We conduct several tests in an effort to rule out this possibility. For instance, we show
that narrow incumbent victories only led to conflict in the poorer half of Philippine
municipalities, where fraud was concentrated. In wealthier municipalities, where there is little
evidence of fraud, narrow incumbent victories are not associated with post-election violence. We
also show that the effect of a narrow victory did not depend on the incumbent’s party affiliation,
suggesting that fraud was the trigger as opposed to the candidate’s political platform. We
conclude that election fraud is causally related to civil conflict. Although the precise mechanism
through which fraudulent elections increase conflict is difficult to pin down, Section 2 provides
anecdotal evidence that election fraud increases support for insurgents and makes it easier for
them to recruit followers
There is a general consensus among practitioners that fraudulent elections can lead to political
and civil unrest in developing countries.

These results are consistent with the hypothesis that election fraud is causally linked to civil
conflict. In an effort to rule out competing explanations. For instance, we showed that narrow
incumbent wins were associated with post-election violence only in poor municipalities. In richer
municipalities, where there is little evidence of fraud, there was essentially no relationship
between post-election violence and narrow incumbent victories. In addition, we showed that the
increase in post-election violence was unrelated to the party affiliation of the incumbent, lending
further support to the argument that fraud, as opposed to the incumbents political platform, was
the causal mechanism.

CONCLUSION:

Based on the above discussion with regards to the first topic, it is safe to assume that the
current crop of candidates sought the advice of lawyers to address a variety of legal issues
relating to their anticipated candidacies, even before announcing the intention of a person to run
for office. Anyone who is giving serious thought to running for political office should engage a
lawyer to help him or her navigate the legal issues that modern day candidates and campaigns
face.

On the second topic, it is apparent that irregularities and violence are prevalent in the
Philippines before, during and even after election. Philippine election lawyers have huge roles in
ensuring the success of an election - specifically in upholding the sanctity of the ballot box and
the true vote of the people and the one responsible in filing protests or cases against erring
individuals for irregularities in the casting, counting and canvassing of votes.

However, it is important that we should consider that there are certain factors that really
affects the sanctity and impartiality of every election in our country - which is the civil conflict.
It is not only the responsibility of every election lawyers and involved government agencies but
also it is a social responsibility of every citizen of this country to protect our nation against
election fraud which has association with civil conflict.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Lawyers have huge responsibilities to fulfill for the success of an election - before, during
and after. Their practice of law should be considered an advocacy and it is their duty to remain
steadfast in ensuring that no man is denied of protection of the law because of lack of knowledge
or low status in life.

Thus, our results suggest that a candidate who is contemplating a run for public office –
particularly one who has not previously sought or served in elective office – is well advised to
conduct a thorough review of his or her past business, professional and personal practices and
experiences in advance of announcing or publicly signaling his or her political intentions. Such a
review is important for identifying potential political issues that the media or a political opponent
may try to inject into the campaign. Indeed, such self-examination has potentially positive
aspects – identifying past experiences or accomplishments that may be political strengths that
were previously overlooked. The self-examination should be supervised by legal counsel, who
will be in the best position to maintain the confidentiality of the review and its findings within
the attorney-client privilege. Conducting a detailed self-examination also is critical to being
prepared to respond to inquiries and allegations about the candidate's past and making certain
there are no inconsistencies in the candidate's or a spokesperson's explanatory statements. It's
always better to find and correct a problem on your own then to have your opponents or the
media do so and expose or exploit it on their terms.

On second topic, we thus suggest that it is the duty of election lawyer to protect the rights
of every candidate, whether in national or local election, against harassment and election fraud of
other person or group of persons or candidates. Furthermore, we recommend that election
lawyers should have thoroughly monitor and promptly file cases against individual or group of
individuals involving election fraud which may be considered having positive association with
the intensity of civil conflict. Lastly, it is our social responsibility to adhere the law whether you
run for an office or you are an ordinary citizen of this nation.

REFERENCES:

 https://www.philippineelectionlawyer.com
 https://rappler.com/national/elections/lawyer-say-universities-watchdog-should-help-
comelec-check-candidates-spending
 https://www.comelec.gov.ph/?r=References/ComelecCases/EPC
 http://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/Philippines/sub5_6f/entry-3903.html
 http://ftp.iza.org/dp7469.pdf
 https://www.philippineelectionlawyer.com/
 Discussion paper no. 7469 on Election Fraud and Post-election Conflict: Evidence from
the Philippines
 Source: Carlos H. Conde, New York Times, July 1, 2005
 Source: Library of Congress