DID BBM COMMIT CRIME OF MORAL TURPITUDE BY NOT PAYING HIS TAXES?

ACCORDING to Google, moral turpitude is “a phrase that describes wicked, deviant behavior constituting an immoral, unethical, or unjust departure from ordinary social standards such that it would shock a community. In criminal law, the law sorts criminal activity into categories of crime either involving or not involving moral turpitude.”

Google says: “Crimes involving moral turpitude have an inherent quality of baseness, vileness, or depravity with respect to a person's duty to another or to society in general.  Examples: rape, forgery, robbery, and solicitation by prostitutes.”

Although crimes of moral turpitude are non-specific in character since they do not involve black and white definition, they possess a criteria of classification involving fraud, or base, vile, and depraved conduct that shocks the conscience.

It could be said that seeking to become the next president of a nation of 110 million people on the basis of the submitted certificate of candidacy (CoC) containing material misrepresentation, or false information, is something that could shock the conscience for its vileness and inherent evil character.

This is now being raised against BBM, who has filed his CoC for president although it was alleged to contain material misrepresentation. BBM did not disclose he was convicted in 1997 by  the Court of Tax Appeals for tax evasion covering the 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.

At least two petitions have been filed seeking cancellation of his CoC because he allegedly failed to disclose his conviction of tax evasion. Another petition is asking Comelec to declare him a nuisance candidate, while another petition wants Comelec to disqualify him.

Artemio Panganiban, a magistrate, who rose to become the chief justice of the Supreme Court, aptly raised the main issues to oust BBMs from the 2022  presidential race : first issue, did BBM commit false material representations in his COC; second issue, did his conviction by the Court of Tax Appeals (CA) involve moral turpitude?

BBM’s lawyer Estelito Mendoza, in his seven-page answer to the Comelec said the petitions either to cancel his CoC or disqualify him did not have specific allegation of false material representation. Besides, BBM is qualified to become president, as the Court of Tax Appeals did not convict of a crime of moral turpitude and that the Comelec allowed him to run for senator in 1995  and vice president in 2016.

Meanwhile, the BBM camp has flooded social media with photographs of the alleged receipts to show he had paid his back taxes. There were no issues to settle – this seemed to be their message to the public.

Under the 1987 Constitution, Comelec is not just the watchog that conducts elections on specific period, but also a quasi-judicial body that hears and decides elections issues brought to its attention for adjudication.

Panganiban did not answer the questions he earlier raised because he obviously did not want to preempt Comelec from deciding those petitions.

But in his column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper, Panganiban mentioned the  precedent-setting decision in the Ty-Delgado v HRET case, where the Supreme Court reversed in 2015 an earlier decision of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) that allowed Philip Pichay to sit as the elected representative of the first district of Surigao del Sur. It High Court declared the petitioner Mary Elizabeth as winner over Pichay in the 2013 congressional elections.

The Supreme Court rules that the HRET committed a grave abuse of discretion by failing to see that Pichay committed libel, which is one of the crimes on moral turpitude. It said: “In the present case, Pichay misrepresented his eligibility in his certificate of candidacy because he knew that he had been convicted by final judgment for a crime involving moral turpitude. Thus, his representation that he was eligible for elective public office constitutes false material representation as to his qualification or eligibility for the office.”#