G.R. No. L-52390, March 31, 1981
MANUEL I. SANTOS, petitioner, vs. COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS, RICARDO NAVAL and JUANITO P. FRANCISCO, respondents.

FACTS

Petitioner Manuel I. Santos was the duly elected and proclaimed Mayor of Taytay, Rizal in the January 30, 1980 local elections, having won by a plurality of 4,326 votes. He assumed office thereafter. The Commission on Elections (COMELEC), however, issued a resolution disqualifying him on the ground of alleged turncoatism. The disqualification stemmed from Santos’s act of resigning from the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) and returning to the Nacionalista Party (NP) before the elections.
Santos’s letter of resignation, dated January 2, 1980, explicitly stated that his disassociation from the KBL was “prompted by my desire to remain a loyal Nacionalista Party member,” as the KBL had been accredited as a political party separate and distinct from the NP. The COMELEC’s resolution effectively nullified the electoral will and disregarded a subsequent published order by the President directing the withdrawal of disqualification charges against winning opposition candidates, reserving only the right for defeated candidates to file an election protest.

ISSUE

Whether the COMELEC committed grave abuse of discretion in disqualifying petitioner Santos for turncoatism based on his resignation from the KBL to remain with the Nacionalista Party, and whether the proper remedy after his proclamation is an election protest rather than a pre-proclamation disqualification case.

RULING

Justice Teehankee, in his dissenting opinion, argued that the COMELEC’s disqualification of Santos cannot stand legal and factual scrutiny. The legal logic is anchored on the Court’s prior ruling in Laban vs. COMELEC, which characterized the KBL initially as an umbrella organization and recognized the freedom of individuals to eventually choose their party affiliation. Santos’s resignation from the KBL to remain with the Nacionalista Party was a valid exercise of this recognized freedom and did not constitute turncoatism as defined by law.
Furthermore, the dissent emphasized that, following Santos’s proclamation and assumption of office, the issue of his eligibility is more appropriately resolved in a quo warranto proceeding or an election protest, not in a pre-proclamation disqualification case. This aligns with the Court’s liberal and procedural principles recently reiterated in Gonzales vs. COMELEC and Mitmug vs. COMELEC, which hold that post-proclamation, the proper course is to dismiss such petitions without prejudice to the filing of an election protest to settle the matter conclusively. The COMELEC’s act of disqualifying Santos after his proclamation, thereby overturning the electorate’s mandate without a full-dress hearing on the merits in the proper forum, constituted a denial of due process and fair play. Justice Teehankee voted to grant the petition and set aside the COMELEC resolution.