G.R. No. 244587 - AMIL P. SULA, GASPAR S. ASI, AND HUSSIEN K. MALIG, SR., VS. COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS, IN ITS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS THE NATIONAL PLEBISCITE BOARD OF CANVASSERS.

Ruling

Accordingly, petitioner-intervenor has legal interest to the issue in the main Petition. Moreover, since the implementation of the assailed Commission on Elections Resolution would involve the expenditure of funds, petitioner-intervenor, as a taxpayer of Cotabato City, possesses the requisite standing to question its validity, given that she has sufficient interest in preventing the illegal expenditure of money raised by taxation. [71] In addition, the intervention will not cause further delay or consequent prejudice to the original parties since respondent Commission on Elections already filed its Comment Ad Cautelem on the Petition-in-Intervention; hence, no additional pleadings need to be filed before this case is resolved. The Petition-in-Intervention also raised the exact same issues in the main Petition and supplemented it with events that had transpired since the main Petition's filing. Petitioners also manifested the events in the same manner in their Urgent Motion to Resolve Petition and/or Application for Issuance of a Temporary Restraining Order or Writ of Preliminary Injunction, which was filed on the same date the Petition-in-Intervention was filed. Petitioner-intervenor also adopted the rest of petitioners' urgent motions, meaning that no new issues or facts were presented apart from the ones that petitioners have already brought to this Court's knowledge. Seeing as the allowance of the Petition-in-Intervention would not further prolong the adjudication of the original parties' rights, and that petitioner-intervenor's claims can be properly decided in this proceeding, this Court sees it fit to allow the Petition-in-Intervention. II The central issue before this Court is whether the conduct of the plebiscite by respondent Commission on Elections in Cotabato City was consistent with the duly constituted statutory and administrative rules and regulations. The hope for a comprehensive, integrated, and holistic peace process in Muslim Mindanao has long been desired by both the government and by the people on the ground. The peace process started as early as 1976, when the Philippine Government and the Moro National Liberation Front signed the Tripoli Agreement. On 2 September 1996, after decades of negotiations, the Final Peace Agreement on the Implementation of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement was signed. In the interim, a break-away group from the Moro National Liberation Front called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was born. [72] The government also initiated negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which resulted in two additional agreements: (1) the Agreement or General Cessation of Hostilities of July 18, 1997, and (2) the General Framework of Agreement of Intent of August 27, 1998. [73] Despite these, hostilities did not end. [74] In 2001, then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Executive Order No. 3, [75] creating the Government Peace Negotiating Panel that held negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in