MANILA — The Commission on Elections on Monday cleared the lone roadblock to former Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano’s congressional run, rejecting a petition questioning his candidacy over residency.

The poll body ruled that Cayetano could seek the congressional seat in the city’s first district, saying he did not lose his domicile there when he and his wife moved their “conjugal dwelling” to the second district.

Petitioner Leonides Buac Jr. earlier questioned the legality — and propriety — of the Cayetanos’ simultaneous congressional run in one of the wealthiest cities in the Philippines.

Cayetano’s wife, incumbent Mayor Lani Cayetano, is facing a similar petition over her candidacy in Taguig’s other district.

DOMICILE

Buac earlier argued that “a married couple can only maintain one legal residence at any given time.”

But the Comelec’s second division ruled: “A person may live and maintain residences in different places but it does not result to (sic) loss of domicile.”

Cayetano, it said, showed no “bona fide” intention to abandon his domicile in Barangay Bagumbayan even if he and his wife later transferred to Taguig’s second district.

“With that, the respondent cannot be considered to have lost that domicile by the mere establishment or transfer of their conjugal dwelling and family home to Fort Bonifacio,” the poll body said.

Buac’s legal counsel Emil Marañon III told ABS-CBN News he would ask the election commission to reconsider the ruling.

In a Facebook post, the lawyer said the unresolved case against Lani Cayetano “still gives us a faint glimmer of hope.”

“We will fight until the end,” he said.

POLITICAL DYNASTY

The Comelec ignored another legal issue raised by the Buac petition, which argued that the poll body could enforce the constitutional prohibition against political dynasties.

The petition said the constitutional provision had been “enabled” when Congress defined the scope of a political dynasty as applied in the Sangguniang Kabataan elections.

Aside from Alan and Lani Cayetano, his younger brother Lino is running for mayor, while their sister Pia, an incumbent congresswoman, is seeking a Senate seat.