MALALUAN v COMELEC
FACTS
Petitioner Luis Malaluan and private respondent Joseph Evangelista were both mayoralty candidates in the Municipality of Kidapawan, North Cotabato, in the Synchronized National and Local Elections held on 1992. Private respondent Joseph Evangelista was proclaimed by the Municipal Board of Canvassers as the duly elected Mayor for having garnered 10,498 votes as against petitioner’s 9,792 votes. Evangelista was, thus, said to have a winning margin of 706 votes. But, on May 22, 1992, petitioner filed an election protest with the Regional Trial Court contesting 64 out of the total 181 precincts of the said municipality. The trial court declared petitioner as the duly elected municipal mayor of Kidapawan, North Cotabato with a plurality of 154 votes. Acting without precedent, the court found private respondent liable not only for Malaluan’s protest expenses but also for moral and exemplary damages and attorney’s fees. On February 3, 1994, private respondent appealed the trial court decision to the COMELEC.
Just a day thereafter that is, on February 4, 1994, petitioner filed a motion for execution pending appeal. The motion was granted by the trial court, in an order, dated March 8, 1994, after petitioner posted a bond in the amount of P500,000.00. By virtue of said order, petitioner assumed the office of MunicipaJ Mayor of Kidapawan, North Cotabato, and exercised the powers and functions of said office. Such exercise was not for long, though. In the herein assailed decision adverse to Malaluan’s continued governance of the Municipality of Kidapawan, North Cotabato, the First Division of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) ordered Malaluan to vacate the office, said division having found and so declared private respondent to be the duly elected Municipal Mayor of said municipality. The COMELEC en banc affirmed said decision.
Malaluan filed this petition before us on May 31, 1995 as a consequence.
It is significant to note that the term of office of the local officials elected in the May, 1992 elections expired on June 30, 1995. Indeed, this petition appears now to be moot and academic because the herein parties are contesting an elective post to which their right to the office no longer exists. However, the question as to damages remains ripe for adjudication. The COMELEC found petitioner liable for attorney’s fees, actual expenses for xerox copies, and unearned salary and other emoluments from March, 1994 to April, 1995, en musse denominated as actual damages, default in payment by petitioner of which shall result in the collection of said amount from the bond posted by petitioner on the occasion of the grant of his motion for execution pending appeal in the trial court. Petitioner naturally contests the propriety and legality of this award upon private respondent on the ground that said damages have not been alleged and proved during trial.
HELD
We have painstakingly gone over the records of this case and we can attribute to petitioner no breach of contract or quasi-contract; or tortious act nor crime that may make him liable for actual damages. Neither has private respondent been “able to point out to a specific provision of law authorizing a money claim for election protest expenses against the losing party. “
COMELEC’s reasoning in awarding the damages in question is fatally flawed. The COMELEC found the election protest filed by the petitioner to be clearly unfounded because its own appreciation of the contested ballots yielded results contrary to those of the trial court. Assuming that this is a reasonable observation not without basis, it is nonetheless fallacious to conclude a malicious intention on the part of petitioner to molest private respondent on the basis of what respondent COMELEC perceived as an erroneous ruling of the trial court. In other words, the actuations of the trial court, after the filing of a case before it, are its own, and any alleged error on its part does not, in the absence of clear proof, make the suit “clearly unfounded” for which the complainant ought to be penalized. Insofar as the award of protest expenses and attorney’s fees are concerned, therefore we find them to have been awarded by respondent COMELEC without basis, the election protest not having been a clearly unfounded one under the aforementioned circumstances.
Finally, we deem the award of salaries and other emoluments to be improper and lacking legal sanction. COMELEC sweepingly concluded, in justifying the award of damages, that since petitioner was adjudged the winner in the elections only by the trial court and assumed the functions of the office on the strength merely of an order granting execution pending appeal, the petitioner occupied the position in an illegal manner as a usurper.
Petitioner was not a usurper because, while a usurper is one who undertakes to act officially without any color of right, the petitioner exercised the duties of an elective office under color of election thereto. It matters not that it was the trial court and not the COMELEC that declared petitioner as the winner, because both, at different stages of the electoral process, have the power to so proclaim winners in electoral contests. At the risk of sounding repetitive, if only to emphasize this point, we must reiterate that the decision of a judicial body is no less a basis than the proclamation made by the COMELEC-convened Board of Canvassers for a winning candidate’s right to assume office, for both are undisputedly legally sanctioned. We deem petitioner, therefore, to be a “de facto officer who, in good faith, has haa possession of the office and had discharged the duties pertaining thereto” and is thus “legally entitled to the emoluments of the office.”
