Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:32:00 10/27/2009
Filed Under: Inquirer Politics, Eleksyon 2010, Joseph Estrada, Legal issues
MANILA, Philippines—As expected, Joseph Estrada’s declaration that he is making another run for the presidency in the May elections drew on Monday the first legal case from a lawyer who the Supreme Court said earlier was suffering from “cerebral deficit.”Oliver Lozano, 69, who claims he is also a “presidential aspirant,” asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to disqualify Estrada five days after the former President announced his political plan next year before 10,000 supporters at a rally in Tondo, Manila.
“The Constitution provides no presidential reelection. This is interpreted to mean that ex-President Estrada is not qualified to run for reelection to which he honestly disagrees,” Lozano said in his eight-page petition.
Comelec Chair Jose Melo has said that a challenge to Estrada’s reelection bid cannot be made until after he has filed a certificate of candidacy during the period prescribed by the poll body beginning Nov. 20.
Asked for comment on Monday, Melo said Lozano’s petition was “too early.”
“You only oppose if the man has filed his candidacy,” he said. “What if Erap (Estrada’s nickname) did not file it?”
Estrada’s spokesperson, Margaux Salcedo, said the petition was “so obviously premature that it almost seems as if Attorney Lozano is either making a mockery of the Comelec or deliberately making a laughingstock of himself to make headlines.”
But Lozano said Estrada’s proclamation on Wednesday that he was running again for president despite the absence of his formal candidacy, should give his petition a legal basis.
The lawyer said the Comelec should not dismiss his challenge as “premature.”
Lozano said the lack of a certificate of candidacy was a “mere technicality” that should be set aside in the interest of justice and fairness.
A little-known lawyer, Lozano burst into the Philippine political scene following the 1986 ouster of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. He led a rabble of “Marcos loyalists” demanding the return of the dictator from Hawaiian exile in protests that at times became violent.
Ambulance-chasing lawyer
In the past several years, he has involved himself in high-profile political cases and was derisively ridiculed as an “ambulance-chasing lawyer,” a term that applied to law practitioners shopping around for clients.
Lozano was the first to file impeachment charges against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2005 over corruption and election fraud charges—allegations which she vehemently denied and which her allies in Congress quashed.
Lawyers claimed that Lozano’s cases were weak and undermined legal moves against Ms Arroyo.
In June 2009, the Supreme Court dismissed Lozano’s petition challenging a plan by the House of Representatives to convene a Senate-less constituent assembly to amend the Constitution as premature.
The court chastised Lozano, saying that while it had been liberal in entertaining questions of law this was not an “open invitation to the ignorant and the ignoble to file petitions that prove nothing but their cerebral deficit.”
The Constitution bars “the President” from seeking reelection. Estrada claims that this did not apply to him but to a sitting Chief Executive.
A movie actor-turned-politician, Estrada won the presidency in 1998 but was ousted in the January 2001 Edsa II revolt over corruption charges. He was convicted of plunder in September 2007, but was pardoned the following month by Ms Arroyo.
During his six-year trial, he was mostly under house arrest in the opulence of his sprawling estate in the town of Tanay in Rizal province.
Last performance
In a fiery speech on Wednesday at Plaza Amado Hernandez in Tondo, the 72-year-old Estrada said his run for the presidency Take 2 would be “the last performance of my life,” vowing to his cheering supporters, “I will not fail you.”
Lozano told the Comelec that he was qualified to run for president and would do so unless Marcos’ son, Ilocos Norte Rep. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., would himself seek the presidency. Marcos junior has not mentioned anything about running for president, but is known to be eyeing a Senate seat next year.
Lozano said he had negotiated with the Abu Sayyaf and stopped bombings in Mindanao. He also worked to uphold consumer rights in the face of inflation in the 1970s.
He also noted that he had not spent or stolen millions of pesos in taxpayers’ money.
“Watching other presidential aspirants on television, he believes he is also qualified. He has done many good things for country and people that the other candidates have not done,” Lozano said, speaking of himself in the third person, in his petition.
Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20091027-232461/First-legal-case-filed-vs-Estrada-candidacy
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