GALLEGO VS VERRA

G.R. No. L-48641                                  November 24, 1941

FACTS:
This is a petition for certiorari to review the decision of the CA affirming the decision of the CFI-Leyte, which declared illegal the petitioner's election to the office of municipal mayor of Abuyog, Leyte in the election of December 1940, on the ground that he did not meet the residence qualification.

Gallego is a native of Abuyog. After his studies, he was employed as a school teacher in Catarman, Samar, as well as in some municipalities in Leyte.In 1937, he ran as municipal mayor in Abuyog but lost. In June 1938, he worked in Malaybalay, Bukidnon in a plantation of Bureau of Forestry to make up for the financial drawback caused by his loss in the previous election, and stayed there until he resigned in September 1940.

Gallego registered himself as an elector in Bukidnon and voted in the election for assemblymen held in December 1938, and in January 1940. He obtained and paid for his residence certificate it was stated that he had resided in the said municipality for one and a half years.

Under the foregoing facts, the CA declared that Gallego lost his domicile in Abuyog at the time he was elected mayor.

ISSUE:
Whether or not Gallego lost his domicile of origin in Abuyog, Leyte and acquired a new domicile in Malaybalay, Bukidnon.

RULING:
NO. In the definition of "residence"in the election law, it states that in order to acquire a domicile by choice, there must concur: (1) residence or bodily presence in the new locality; (2) an intention to remain there; and (3) an intention to abandon the old domicile.

The purpose to remain in the domicile should be for an indefinite period of time. The court believed that Gallego had no intention to stay in Malaybalay indefinitely because: (1) When he was employed as a teacher in Samar, he always returned in Abuyog and even resigned when he ran for office in 1937; (2) His departure was only for the purpose of making up for the financial drawback caused by his loss in the election; (3) He did not take his wife and children to Malaybalay with him; (4) He bought a piece of land in Abuyog and did not avail of the land in the plantation offered to him by the government; and (5) He visited his family thrice despite the great distance between Leyte and Bukidnon.

The Court said that the manifest intent of the law in fixing a residence qualification is to "exclude a stranger, or a newcomer, unacquainted with the conditions and needs of a community and not identified with the latter from an elective office to serve that community."

Moreover, the petitioner was a native there, had run for the same office before, and was now elected with a majority of 800 votes in a 3rd class municipality.