Datu Michael Abas Kida v. Senate of the Philippines, et al.

,
G.R. No. 196271

FACTS:
On June 30, 2011, Republic Act (RA) No. 10153, entitled “An Act Providing for the Synchronization of
the Elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) with the National and Local
Elections and for Other Purposes” was enacted, resetting the next ARMM regular elections to May
2013 to coincide with the regular national and local elections of the country.

The history of ARMM instituted first by the provisions of Article X of the 1987 Constitution, mandated
the creation of autonomous regions in Muslim Mindanao and the Cordilleras specfically Sections 15 to
22 wherein the congress promulgated the Republic Act (RA) No. 6734 which is the organic act that
established the ARMM and scheduled the first regular elections for the ARMM regional officials.

Following aforementioned arcticle is the RA No. 9054 which amended the ARMM Charter and reset the
regular elections for the ARMM regional officials to the second Monday of September 2001. RA No.
9140 further reset the first regular elections to November 26, 2001. RA No. 9333 reset for the third time
the ARMM regional elections to the 2nd Monday of August 2005 and on the same date every 3 years
thereafter.

Pursuant to RA No. 9333, the next ARMM regional elections should have been held on August 8, 2011.
COMELEC had begun preparations for these elections and had accepted certificates of candidacies for
the various regional offices to be elected.

In these consolidated petitions for certiorari, prohibition and mandamus filed directly with the Supreme
Court, the petitioners assailed the constitutionality of RA No. 10153.

ISSUES:
1. Whether or not the 1987 Constitution mandates the synchronization of elections.
2. Whether or not the passage of RA No. 10153 violates Section 26(2), Article VI of the 1987
Constitution.
3. Is the grant [to the President] of the power to appoint OICs constitutional?

RULING:
The Supreme Court DISMISSED the petitions and UPHELD the constitutionality of RA No. 10153 in
toto.

1.YES, the 1987 Constitution mandates the synchronization of elections.

While the Constitution does not expressly state that Congress has to synchronize national and local
elections, the clear intent towards this objective can be gleaned from the Transitory Provisions (Article
XVIII) of the Constitution, which show the extent to which the Constitutional Commission, by
deliberately making adjustments to the terms of the incumbent officials, sought to attain synchronization
of elections. The Constitutional Commission exchanges, read with the provisions of the Transitory
Provisions of the Constitution, all serve as patent indicators of the constitutional mandate to hold
synchronized national and local elections, starting the second Monday of May 1992 and for all the
following elections.

From the perspective of the Constitution, autonomous regions are considered one of the forms of local
governments, as evident from Article X of the Constitution entitled Local Government. Autonomous
regions are established and discussed under Sections 15 to 21 of this Article the article wholly devoted
to Local Government.

In this case, the ARMM elections, although called “regional” elections, should be included among the
elections to be synchronized as it is a “local” election based on the wording and structure of the
Constitution.

Thus, the Supreme Court find the contention that the synchronization mandated by the Constitution
does not include the regional elections of the ARMM unmeritorious.

2. NO, the passage of RA No. 10153 DOES NOT violate Section 26(2), Article VI of the 1987
Constitution which refers to the three-readings-on-separate-days requirement.

Before bills passed by either the House or the Senate can become law or statute they must pass
through three readings on separate days, with the EXCEPTION of when the President certifies to the
necessity of the bill’s immediate enactment. The Court, in Tolentino v. Secretary of Finance, explained
the effect of the President’s certification of necessity in the following manner:

The presidential certification dispensed with the requirement not only of printing but also that of reading
the bill on separate days.The phrase “except when the President certifies to the necessity of its
immediate enactment, etc.” in Art. VI, Section 26[2] qualifies the two stated conditions before a bill can
become a law: [i] the bill has passed three readings on separate days and [ii] it has been printed in its
final form and distributed three days before it is finally approved.

In the present case, the records show that the President wrote to the Speaker of the House of
Representatives to certify the necessity of the immediate enactment of a law synchronizing the ARMM
elections with the national and local elections. Following the Tolentino ruling, the Supreme Court held
the President’s certification exempted both the House and the Senate from having to comply with the
three separate readings requirement.

3. YES, the grant [to the President] of the power to appoint OICs in the ARMM is constitutional

[During the oral arguments, the Court identified the three options open to Congress in order to resolve
the problem on who should sit as ARMM officials in the interim [in order to achieve synchronization in
the 2013 elections]: (1) allow the [incumbent] elective officials in the ARMM to remain in office in a hold
over capacity until those elected in the synchronized elections assume office; (2) hold special elections
in the ARMM, with the terms of those elected to expire when those elected in the [2013] synchronized
elections assume office; or (3) authorize the President to appoint OICs, [their respective terms to last
also until those elected in the 2013 synchronized elections assume office.]

3.1. 1st option: Holdover is unconstitutional since it would extend the terms of office of the
incumbent ARMM officials
We rule out the [hold over] option since it violates Section 8, Article X of the Constitution. This
provision states:

Section 8. The term of office of elective local officials, except barangay officials, which shall be
determined by law, shall be three years and no such official shall serve for more than three
consecutive terms. [emphases ours]

Since elective ARMM officials are local officials, they are covered and bound by the three-year
term limit prescribed by the Constitution; they cannot extend their term through a holdover. xxx.

If it will be claimed that the holdover period is effectively another term mandated by Congress,
the net result is for Congress to create a new term and to appoint the occupant for the new
term. This view – like the extension of the elective term – is constitutionally infirm because
Congress cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly, i.e., to act in a way that would
effectively extend the term of the incumbents. Indeed, if acts that cannot be legally done directly
can be done indirectly, then all laws would be illusory. Congress cannot create a new term and
effectively appoint the occupant of the position for the new term. This is effectively an act of
appointment by Congress and an unconstitutional intrusion into the constitutional appointment
power of the President. Hence, holdover – whichever way it is viewed – is a constitutionally
infirm option that Congress could not have undertaken.

Even assuming that holdover is constitutionally permissible, and there had been statutory basis
for it (namely Section 7, Article VII of RA No. 9054) in the past, we have to remember that the
rule of holdover can only apply as an available option where no express or implied legislative
intent to the contrary exists; it cannot apply where such contrary intent is evident.

Congress, in passing RA No. 10153, made it explicitly clear that it had the intention of
suppressing the holdover rule that prevailed under RA No. 9054 by completely removing this
provision. The deletion is a policy decision that is wholly within the discretion of Congress to
make in the exercise of its plenary legislative powers; this Court cannot pass upon questions of
wisdom, justice or expediency of legislation, except where an attendant unconstitutionality or
grave abuse of discretion results.

3.2. 2nd option: Calling special elections is unconstitutional since COMELEC, on its own, has
no authority to order special elections.

The power to fix the date of elections is essentially legislative in nature. [N]o elections may be
held on any other date for the positions of President, Vice President, Members of Congress and
local officials, except when so provided by another Act of Congress, or upon orders of a body or
officer to whom Congress may have delegated either the power or the authority to ascertain or
fill in the details in the execution of that power.

Notably, Congress has acted on the ARMM elections by postponing the scheduled August 2011
elections and setting another date – May 13, 2011 – for regional elections synchronized with the
presidential, congressional and other local elections. By so doing, Congress itself has made a
policy decision in the exercise of its legislative wisdom that it shall not call special elections as
an adjustment measure in synchronizing the ARMM elections with the other elections.

After Congress has so acted, neither the Executive nor the Judiciary can act to the contrary by
ordering special elections instead at the call of the COMELEC. This Court, particularly, cannot
make this call without thereby supplanting the legislative decision and effectively legislating. To
be sure, the Court is not without the power to declare an act of Congress null and void for being
unconstitutional or for having been exercised in grave abuse of discretion. But our power rests
on very narrow ground and is merely to annul a contravening act of Congress; it is not to
supplant the decision of Congress nor to mandate what Congress itself should have done in the
exercise of its legislative powers.

Thus, in the same way that the term of elective ARMM officials cannot be extended through a
holdover, the term cannot be shortened by putting an expiration date earlier than the three (3)
years that the Constitution itself commands. This is what will happen – a term of less than two
years – if a call for special elections shall prevail. In sum, while synchronization is achieved, the
result is at the cost of a violation of an express provision of the Constitution.

3.3. 3rd option: Grant to the President of the power to appoint ARMM OICs in the interim is
valid.

The above considerations leave only Congress’ chosen interim measure – RA No. 10153 and
the appointment by the President of OICs to govern the ARMM during the pre-synchronization
period pursuant to Sections 3, 4 and 5 of this law – as the only measure that Congress can
make. This choice itself, however, should be examined for any attendant constitutional infirmity.

At the outset, the power to appoint is essentially executive in nature, and the limitations on or
qualifications to the exercise of this power should be strictly construed; these limitations or
qualifications must be clearly stated in order to be recognized. The appointing power is
embodied in Section 16, Article VII of the Constitution, which states:

Section 16. The President shall nominate and, with the consent of the Commission on
Appointments, appoint the heads of the executive departments, ambassadors, other public
ministers and consuls or officers of the armed forces from the rank of colonel or naval captain,
and other officers whose appointments are vested in him in this Constitution. He shall also
appoint all other officers of the Government whose appointments are not otherwise provided for
by law, and those whom he may be authorized by law to appoint. The Congress may, by law,
vest the appointment of other officers lower in rank in the President alone, in the courts, or in the
heads of departments, agencies, commissions, or boards. [emphasis ours]

This provision classified into four groups the officers that the President can appoint. These are:

First, the heads of the executive departments; ambassadors; other public ministers and consuls;
officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, from the rank of colonel or naval captain; and
other officers whose appointments are vested in the President in this Constitution;
Second, all other officers of the government whose appointments are not otherwise provided for
by law;
Third, those whom the President may be authorized by law to appoint; and
Fourth, officers lower in rank whose appointments the Congress may by law vest in the
President alone.

Since the President’s authority to appoint OICs emanates from RA No. 10153, it falls under the
third group of officials that the President can appoint pursuant to Section 16, Article VII of the
Constitution. Thus, the assailed law facially rests on clear constitutional basis.

If at all, the gravest challenge posed by the petitions to the authority to appoint OICs under
Section 3 of RA No. 10153 is the assertion that the Constitution requires that the ARMM
executive and legislative officials to be “elective and representative of the constituent political
units.” This requirement indeed is an express limitation whose non-observance in the assailed
law leaves the appointment of OICs constitutionally defective.

After fully examining the issue, we hold that this alleged constitutional problem is more
apparent than real and becomes very real only if RA No. 10153 were to be mistakenly read as a
law that changes the elective and representative character of ARMM positions. RA No. 10153,
however, does not in any way amend what the organic law of the ARMM (RA No. 9054) sets
outs in terms of structure of governance. What RA No. 10153 in fact only does is to “appoint
officers-in-charge for the Office of the Regional Governor, Regional Vice Governor and
Members of the Regional Legislative Assembly who shall perform the functions pertaining to the
said offices until the officials duly elected in the May 2013 elections shall have qualified and
assumed office.” This power is far different from appointing elective ARMM officials for the
abbreviated term ending on the assumption to office of the officials elected in the May 2013
elections.

[T]he legal reality is that RA No. 10153 did not amend RA No. 9054. RA No. 10153, in fact,
provides only for synchronization of elections and for the interim measures that must in the
meanwhile prevail. And this is how RA No. 10153 should be read – in the manner it was written
and based on its unambiguous facial terms. Aside from its order for synchronization, it is purely
and simply an interim measure responding to the adjustments that the synchronization requires.