Tito Sotto Wants Candidate Substitution Ban Due To Abuse Of Usage
CANDIDATE SUBSTITUTION – Senate President Tito Sotto said that he wants to amend the Omnibus Election Code to ban candidate substitutions.
Currently, the upcoming elections have produced some questionable candidates for Presidency. Back in the 2016 elections, President Duterte was the substitute Presidential Candidate of PDP-Laban.
Duterte replaced Martin Diño, a fellow party member of PDP and the rest became history. Now, political experts believe that a similar set-up is brewing for the President’s daughter, Davao City Mayor, Sara Duterte.
Interestingly, on the last day of filing for the certificate of candidacy, Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa shocked the country as he filed for President. Two hours before the deadline, Bato got a call from PDP-Laban asking him to run for President, and so he did.
But, election lawyer Romulo Macalintal said that Bato’s willingness to withdraw from the race could make him a “nuisance candidate”. As such, the person his party is eying to substitute him with cannot run for President in his place.
Adding to this, Sotto said that he wanted to remove the ability of parties to substitute candidates as it was prone to “being abused”. According to a report from ANC, Sotto said:
“That is what is being abused… If you are not ready and unprepared, why are you running for public office?“.
Furthermore, Sotto’s running mate, Presidential Candidate Senator Koko Pimentel said that it can be considered as abuse if “fake candidates” were placed intentionally. “A fake candidate is necessarily a nuisance candidate“, said the Senator.
What do you think about this? Leave your comments below.
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