Comelec to complete purging nuisance bets from list before end of Nov

Commission on Elections Chairperson George Garcia | PHOTO: INQUIRER.net file photo / NOY MORCOSO

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will finish the removal of nuisance candidates from the official ballots before the end of November, poll chief George Erwin Garcia said on Wednesday.

“For nuisance [candidates], I promise that by November 30, we will resolve it. That’s our commitment,” Garcia said in a press conference.

Comelec said 184 senatorial aspirants filed their certificate of candidacies (COC) from Oct. 1 to 8.

Garcia said the Comelec could not yet determine how many of them would make the cut before the printing of ballots in December.

However, it can be recalled that only 54 senatorial candidates out of 176 aspirants who filed their COCs made it into the 2022 poll ballots.

A 2022 election aspirant appealed before the Supreme Court Comelec’s decision in declaring him a nuisance candidate.

Comelec prevented Norman Marquez’s Senate bid for being “virtually unknown” and having no political party.

However, the high tribunal said the grounds used by the Comelec to justify the nuisance label on the petitioner — simply because he is not well-known, neither affiliated with influential groups nor supported by any political machinery — reduced the election, a “sacred instrument of democracy,” to “a mere popularity contest.”

Marquez is running for senator again for midterm polls next year.

Senatorial aspirant Beth Lopez, who was declared a nuisance candidate three consecutive times, also tried her luck once more.

“If the Comelec does not let me run for senator, I will curse all of the people involved in my disqualification,” an emotional Lopez said in Filipino, attributing her disqualification to her being poor.

READ: Senatorial aspirant to ‘curse’ anyone who will disqualify her

Nelson Ancajas, a street food vendor, said he knows he will be declared a nuisance candidate again.

READ: Vendor files COC for senator; appeals for sick child, hits PGH budget cut

Ancajas said he filed his COC for a senator to use as a platform to shed light on the condition of his three-year-old child, who has congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

“Real talk. I know that when you are penniless, they will remove your name [on the ballot],” he said. “But I need to voice out what we are experiencing.”