BIR Employees Association Inc.

October 23, 1987 BIR Employees Association Inc. c/o Mr. Eufracio D. Santos Quezon City Sir : This refers to your letter dated October 22, 1987 requesting opinion on whether the past Presidents of the BIR Employees Association, Inc., who are still in the revenue service are automatically disqualified from running as candidates for regular directorship in the board under Article IV, Section 1 of the association's amended by-laws. You further alleged in your letter that the aforesaid by-laws provision may constitute a disqualification or ban on a past President from being a candidate for directorship considering that if the concerned director gets elected he will have dual personality both as a regular director and as an ex-officio member of the board. The only issue raised herein is whether the said by-laws provision automatically disqualifies past Presidents from running as candidates for directorship in the board. Article IV, Section 1 of the association's by-laws reads in part as follows: "Past Presidents of the association who are still in the Revenue Service shall be advisers and ex-officio members of the board without the right to vote." It can thus be gleaned from the aforequoted provision that past Presidents of the association who are still in the service shall become advisers and ex-officio members of the board, however, without voting rights. Nowhere in the said provision can we find that they are per se disqualified from running as candidates for directorship. Moreover, under the statutory construction rule on "Casus Omissus" it is specifically stated that: "A person, object, or thing omitted from an enumeration in a statute must be held to have been omitted intentionally. For it is not the office of the Court to insert in a statute that which has been omitted; what the legislature omits the courts cannot supply." (Alcantara Statutes 1971 pp. 38-39) Additionally, if an ex-officio President files his candidacy and gets elected, he is deemed to have relinquished his position as ex-officio President and thus becomes a regular member of the board. Hence, no dual personality shall exist. All the foregoing considered and in the absence of the express provision on disqualification in the instant case, Ex-officio Presidents may therefore run as candidates for directorship in the association's board. LibLex Very truly yours, (SGD.) ROSARIO N. LOPEZ Associate Commissioner