SANTOS V. COMELEC (REMEDIAL, ELECTION)

The petition is impressed with merit. As shown in the records, respondent was guilty of forum-shopping.

FORUM-SHOPPING is an act of a party against whom an adverse judgment or order has been in one forum of seeking and possibly getting a favorable opinion in another forum, other than by appeal or special civil action for certiorari. It may also be the institution of 2 or more actions or proceedings grounded on the same cause on the supposition that one or the other court would make a favorable disposition.

For it to exist, there should be:

1. identity of parties, or at least such as would represent the same interest in both actions;
2. identity of rights asserted and relief prayed for, the relief being founded on the same facts; and
3. identity of the 2 preceding particulars such that any judgment rendered in the other action will, regardless of which is successful, amount to res judicata in the action under consideration.

Considering that respondent was indubitably guilty of forum-shopping when he filed SPR No. 37-2002, his petition should have been dismissed outright by the COMELEC. Willful and deliberate forum-shopping is a ground for summary dismissal of the case and constitutes direct contempt of court.

A valid exercise of the discretion to allow EXECUTION PENDING APPEAL requires that it should be based "upon good reasons to be stated in a special order." The following constitute "good reasons" and a combination of 2 or more of them will suffuie to grant execution pending appeal:

1. public interest involved or will of the electorate;
2. the shortness of the remaining portion of the term of the contested office; and
3. the length of time that the election contest has been pending.

To deprive trial courts of their discretion to grant execution pending appeal would, in the words of Tobon Uy v. COMELEC, bring back the ghost of the GRAB-THE-PROCLAMATION-PROLONG-THE-PROTEST techniques so often resorted to by devious politicians in the past in their efforts to perpetuate their hold to an elective office. This would, as a consequence, lay to waste the will of the electorate.