Duterte Youth Chairperson Ronald Cardema repeatedly and falsely claimed that Kabataan Party-list was among the complainants who filed the disqualification petition before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) against his party-list in 2019.
In a statement on May 22, the Duterte Youth said, “Yung mismong nagfile samin ng kaso noong 2019, Kabataan PL at Gabriela PL, ay finile-an rin mismo ng disqualification at cancelation of registration sa Comelec.”
(The very groups that filed a case against us in 2019, Kabataan PL and Gabriela PL, were also themselves filed with disqualification and cancellation of registration cases before the Comelec.)
Duterte Youth also wrongly attributed the suspension of its 2019 proclamation to a disqualification petition filed by members of Kabataan Party-list.
“Sabi ng Comelec kasi pending pa ‘yung kaso ng mga Kabataan Party-list Members against us since 2019 kaya i-hold daw muna tayo,” the May 21 statement read.
(Comelec said our proclamation had to be put on hold because the case filed against us by Kabataan Party-list members in 2019 was still pending.)
Rating: This is false.
Facts
Duterte Youth is facing two disqualification petitions: one filed in 2019 and another in May 2025.
The 2019 case was filed by four private individuals — Reeya Beatrice Magtalas, Abigail Aleli Tan, Raainah Punzalan and Aunell Ross Angcos. They were represented by legal counsel Emil Marañon III.
The petition, the first to seek Duterte Youth’s disqualification, stemmed from the withdrawal of all five party-list nominees following their victory in the 2019 midterm elections.
After the withdrawals, Cardema attempted to substitute himself as the first nominee. However, he had already exceeded the 30-year age limit to represent the youth sector, resulting in his disqualification in August 2019 for material misrepresentation.
According to the Party-List System Act, a nominee of the youth sector must be 25 to 30 years old on the day of the election. Cardema was already 34 years old in 2019.
Meanwhile, the second disqualification petition was filed on May 8 by incumbent student regents from the University of the Philippines and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, including the Youth Alliance for Climate Action Philippines (YACAP).
They argue that Duterte Youth violated election laws through widespread red-tagging of critics and student activists. The Comelec, however, only recognized this as a violation of the safe spaces resolution it issued during the 2025 midterm elections.
Read the rest of the story in Philstar.com.