HAS Estelito Mendoza thrown his client, presidential aspirant Ferdinand Marcos Jr. , under the bus?
In a 54-page memorandum he submitted to the Comelec on December 20, Mendoza cited the conflicting opinions of retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio and former justice secretary Alberto Agra: “When even the pillars of the legal community cannot agree on the matter, BBM, as a layman, cannot be faulted if his interpretation of a difficult question of law [turns] out to be erroneous….
Has Mendoza thrown BBM under the bus? Obviously not! I believe that Mendoza has not presented a legal argument, but a political statement. His tack is more of a persuasive one targeting public perception, in order to paint his client as a victim of the legal system. Hopefully, the Comelec does not fall into this trap. It’s lamentable how public discourse in the age of social media has been pushed down the gutter so many times.
It was alleged that BBM’s CoC contains material misrepresentation for his failure to disclose that he was convicted in 1997 by the Court of Appeals for tax evasion, covering the period 1982-1985, and that he was asked to pay the deficiency taxes and their surcharges. This CA decision has made him ineligible to hold any public office, petitioners assert.
Earlier, Artemio Panganiban, a retired SC chief justice, aptly raised two issues to oust BBM from the 2022 presidential race. The first: whether BBM committed false material representations in his CoC. The second issue is whether his CA conviction involves moral turpitude.
The author is misinformed about non-filing or ITR and Tax evasion, the two are not similar.
Ang gulo mo