Supreme Court Case
Rodofo Aguinaldo v. Luis Santos
it is an offshoot of a 1992 Supreme Court ruling in the certiorari and prohibition case Rodofo Aguinaldo filed against Luis Santos, then Secretary of the Department of Local Government, and Melvin Vargas, then acting governor of Cagayan Province.
Aguinaldo, in the suit, questioned Santos’s March 19, 1990 decision in an administrative case that dismissed him from service as Cagayan Province governor for supporting the 1989 coup d’état launched by factions of the military against the government of Corazon Aquino.
The governor faced the investigation and was preventively suspended for 60 days. He was eventually sacked and Vargas, the vice governor then, was appointed as his replacement.
Aguinaldo contested the ruling and, while the case was still pending, managed to run and win his old post back in the 1992 elections.
Cases were again filed and Aguinaldo found reprieve when the SC said the interior and local government order that sacked him had not yet attained finality, making his candidacy and win valid.
The SC then ruled on the case proper, saying “offenses committed, or acts done, during a previous term are generally held not to furnish cause for removal.”
“The underlying theory is that each term is separate from other terms, and that the reelection to office operates as a condonation of the officer’s misconduct to the extent of cutting off the right to remove him therefore,” the ruling read.
“The Court should ever remove a public officer for acts done prior to his present term of office. To do otherwise would be to deprive the people of their right to elect their officers. When a people have elected a man to office, it must be assumed that they did this with knowledge of his life and character, and that they disregarded or forgave his fault or misconduct, if he had been guilty of any. It is not for the court, by reason of such fault or misconduct, to practically overrule the will of the people,” it added.