Petitioner Has No Locus Standi

Petitioner Gamboa claims that he filed the petition in his capacity as a "nominal shareholder of PLDT and as [a] taxpayer."¹⁵ However, these claims do not clothe him with the requisite legal standing to bring this suit.

The Rules of Court specifically requires that "[e]very action must be prosecuted or defended in the name of the real party in interest."¹⁶ A real party in interest is defined as the "party who stands to be benefited or injured by the judgment in the suit, or the party entitled to the avails of the suit."

Petitioner has failed to allege any interest in the 111,415 PTIC shares nor in any of the previous purchase contracts he now seeks to annul. He is neither a shareholder of PTIC nor of First Pacific. Also, he has not alleged that he was an interested bidder in the government’s auction sale of the PTIC shares. Finally, he has not shown how, as a nominal shareholder of PLDT, he stands to benefit from the annulment of the sale of the 111,415 PTIC shares or of any of the sales of the PLDT common shares held by foreigners. In fine, petitioner has not shown any real interest substantial enough to give him the requisite locus standi to question the sale of the government’s PTIC shares to First Pacific.

Likewise, petitioner’s assertion that he has standing to bring the suit as a "taxpayer" must fail. In Gonzales v. Narvasa, We discussed that "a taxpayer is deemed to have the standing to raise a constitutional issue when it is established that public funds have been disbursed in alleged contravention of the law or the Constitution."¹⁷ In this case, no public funds have been disbursed. In fact, the opposite has happened––there is an inflow of funds into the government coffers.

Evidently, petitioner Gamboa has no legal standing to bring the present petition before this Court.