The Commission on Elections should not allow ousted president Joseph Estrada to run in the 2010 national elections as his second stab at the presidency is unconstitutional and establishes a “bad precedent.”
Lawyer Edillo Pormento filed on Saturday a petition to disqualify Estrada as a presidential candidate in the May 2010 polls at the Comelec headquarters in Intramuros.
In his three-page petition, Pormento said the Comelec should declare the former president a “nuisance candidate” and exclude his name from the official list of candidates and from the ballots.
Estrada’s run for the presidency violates the 1987 Constitution’s provision prohibiting presidents from seeking any reelection, he said.
Pormento also argued that allowing the former president to run in the 2007 polls would create a “bad precedent” for future leaders of the country.
The Comelec’s acceptance of Estrada’s certificate of candidacy will “become a bad precedent because other former past presidents of this country would follow suit by also filing their certificates of candidacy in future presidential elections.”
“It will also defeat the wisdom behind the creation of the aforementioned constitutional provision which prescribes as one full six-year term of the President of this Republic without the benefit of reelection,” Pormento said.
Despite questions over the legality of his second bid for the presidency, Estrada filed his CoC with his vice-presidential running mate and senatorial candidates at the Comelec last Nov. 30.
Estrada said he has more right than President Macapagal-Arroyo, who is running for a local post in Pampanga, in joining the 2010 contests since he was not able to finish his term.
The former actor-turned-politician was elected president in 1998, but was ousted in 2001 in a popular uprising over corruption charges.
Estrada said his team of lawyers and legal luminaries would argue for his candidacy up to the Supreme Court.
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