People's Initiative

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People's Initiative (or "PI") is a common appellative in the Philippines that refers to

either a mode for constitutional amendment provided by the 1987 Philippine
Constitution or to the act of pushing an initiative (national or local) allowed by the
Philippine Initiative and Referendum Act of 1987. The appellative also refers to the
product of either of those initiatives.

The provision in the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines allowing for a "people's

initiative" as one of the modes for constitutional amendment has been called the
"people's initiative clause." The other modes allowed by the Constitution involve
a Constituent Assembly (or "Con-Ass") or a Constitutional Convention (or "Con-Con"),
both of which also allow a total revision of the charter.

The appellation (also known as "PI") also refers to the act—allowed by the law-
given right of the Filipino people—of directly initiating statutes or calling
for referenda on both the national and the local government level.

Summary

This is as defined in the Initiative and Referendum Act:

Time limit
Type Signatures required Prohibited topics
limitations

Can only be  Petitions with

done five years more than one
 12% of voters after the topic
Initiative on nationwide ratification of
the the 1987  Emergency
 3% of voters in measures, as
constitution every legislative constitution,
and once every defined by the
district constitution
5 years
thereafter

 10% of voters
nationwide
Initiative on
statutes  3% of voters in
every legislative
district

Initiative on  10% of voters in Shall not be

local laws a local government exercised more
 unit

 3% of voters in
every legislative
district

o If province or
city is
composed of
only one
legislative
district, it shall
than once a
be 3% in every
year
municipality in
a province
or barangay in
a city

o If in a
municipality,
3% of every
barangay

o If in a barangay,
10% of voters

Constitutional amendment initiatives[edit]

The process of amending the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines is popularly known
to many Filipinos as Charter Change. Any proposed amendment or revision must be
ratified by the majority of Filipinos in a plebiscite.

Article XVII, Section 2 of the Constitution states:

Amendments to this Constitution may likewise be directly proposed by the people

through initiative upon a petition of at least twelve per centum of the total number of
registered voters, of which every legislative district must be represented by at least
three per centum of the registered votes therein. No amendment under this section
shall be authorized within five years following the ratification of this Constitution nor
oftener than once every five years thereafter.

The Congress shall provide for the implementation of the exercise of this right.
[1]

An enabling law for this Article XVII, Section 2 Philippine Constitutional provision,

called the Initiative and Referendum Act, was authored in 1987 by senators Raul
Roco (Aksyon Demokratiko) and Neptali Gonzales (Liberal Party) and was passed by
the Eighth Congress of the Philippines in 1989. The law provides for the
implementation of the exercise of the people's right to initiate a petition to amend the
Constitution, with the Election Registrar of the Commission on Elections (Comelec)
tasked under the law with the verification of the petition signatures' being by at least
twelve per centum of the total number of registered voters in the state. [2] However,
the Supreme Court declared the Initiative and Referendum Act procedures for
amending the constitution as fatally defective, although it didn't affect the operation of
the law for other types of initiatives.[3]

1997 People’s Initiative for Reform Modernization and Action[edit]

At the tail-end of the presidency of Fidel Ramos, the People's Initiative for Reform
Modernization and Action (PIRMA, the Tagalog word for "signature") started a
signature campaign for amending the constitution, such as shift to a parliamentary
system of government and the lifting of term limits on elected officials, including
Ramos himself. The president denied being behind the campaign. The Supreme Court
shot down PIRMA's petition, saying that there was no enabling law for it, and that the
group's petition was defective.[4]

2006 Sigaw ng Bayan[edit]

During the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Supreme Court rejected the
petition of Sigaw ng Bayan, saying that their petition was defective because they did
not show the people the full text of the proposed amendments before having them sign
the petition.[4]

Statute and referendum initiatives[edit]

The People's Initiative can also refer to the right of Filipinos to initiate statutes as well
as call for referenda on both the national and local government level, a right given by
the Initiative and Referendum Act of 1987, otherwise known as Republic Act 6735.

2014 People's Initiative Against Pork Barrel[edit]

From late June to early August 2014, a People's Initiative Against Pork Barrel (PIAP)
was repeatedly announced as up for launch in a forthcoming August 23 "people's
congress" in Cebu City. The initiative, a multisectoral alliance-driven proposition
to criminalize pork barrel fund creation and spending, was led by various groups and
individuals including Cebu Archbishop Jose S. Palma, the broad
#AbolishPorkMovement, the Catholic Church-backed Cebu Coalition Against the Pork
Barrel System, the Church People's Alliance Against Pork Barrel, ePIRMA (Empowered
People's Initiative and Reform Movement Alliance), the Makabayan Coalition
(principally through Bayan Muna party-list representative Neri Colmenares), the
Solidarity for Transformation, Youth Act Now, the Scrap Pork Network, and
former Philippine Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno.[5][6][7][8][9][10] The Cebu
congress was immediately followed by a signature rally at Luneta Park, on August 25,
2014.[11]

The proposition was one of civil society's resulting reactions to the Priority

Development Assistance Fund scam of 2013 and the Million People March and other
protests that followed. An exploratory "people's congress" to draft an initiative on
spending public funds was first convened by the ePIRMA at the Asian Institute of
Management Conference Center on November 9, 2013, with Puno, Colmenares and
ePIRMA's legal-team head Jose M. Roy III leading the conference that was attended by
representatives from various groups coming from all over the country. ePIRMA and the
"people's congress" alliance later scheduled its first draft to be completed by January
2014 while it was awaiting the Supreme Court's decision on prior petitions against
both the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the "presidential pork"
disbursements under Benigno Aquino III's government's Disbursement Acceleration
Program (DAP).[12][13][14][15][16][17]

Petitions against the PDAF were first filed with the Supreme Court by the Social
Justice Society on August 28, 2013, by Greco Belgica et al. on September 3, 2013,
and by Pedrito Nepomuceno on September 5, 2013. Petitions against the DAP were
filed with the Supreme Court by nine separate groups of petitioners between October 7
and November 7, 2013. The petitioners included the Integrated Bar of the Philippines,
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, GABRIELA Women's Party, Bayan Muna, Ang
Kapatiran, and Belgica, among others. On November 19, 2013, the Supreme Court
declared the PDAF unconstitutional;[18][19] a decision on the DAP came out seven and a
half months later, on July 1, 2014, also declaring basic parts of the program as
unconstitutional.[20][21][22]

Under the PIAP's proposed Pork Barrel Abolition Act, all budgets submitted to any
legislative body shall contain only itemized appropriations, except funds for relief
and rescue operations during calamities and funds for intelligence work and security.
The proposed legislation also called for the abolition of the Presidential Social Fund,
which has also been described as a form of pork barrel. Violators of this law were to be
banned for life from holding public office.[23]

On November 25, 2014, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that the Philippine

Commission on Elections received the first 10,000 signatures from the initiative thrust
in Quezon City. The signatures were from the city's first six districts, a first
installment of the required 177,000 signatures from the entire city territory.
Meanwhile, PIAP-Metro Manila coordinator Mark Lui Aquino said they had yet to
submit to the Comelec the 50,000 to 100,000 signatures they had gathered in the
metropolis. PIAP-Quezon City spokesperson Malou Turalde said, however, that Quezon
City was not the first to submit to the Comelec gathered signatures for the initiative,
adding that other legislative districts "just want to be quiet." Aquino also expressed
fear that the "Comelec seems unready" and added that, based on his group's
monitoring, the Comelec offices in the different cities and municipalities "do not know
what to do with the signatures."[24]

Malacañang's resistance to the initiative[edit]

On September 4, 2014, Rep. Neri Colmenares announced that the ruling Liberal Party
was trying to undermine the people's initiative against the pork barrel system. During
his interpellation on the same day, at the Philippine Congress budget committee
hearing on the 2015 budget for the Philippine Commission on Elections, Colmenares
noticed that the Malacañang Palace and its allies in Congress took out the budget that
they had placed for a charter change (Cha-Cha) referendum they were planning to
launch. Colmenares asked for the budget to be reinserted for the people's initiative
plebiscite, but budget committee vice-chair Dakila Cua (Liberal Party, formerly Lakas
Kampi CMD) said that Colmenares's motion should be made during the committee
deliberations on the budget.[25] A number of Liberal Party leaders and spokesmen
earlier announced their wish to amend the Constitution to allow President Benigno
Aquino III to run for re-election; as under the present Constitution the President
cannot run again for the same office after his single six-year term. [26]

Furthermore, groups against the pork barrel noted that the Aquino government had
drafted a national budget for 2015 that still contained "pork" in the form of "special
purpose funds," thus ignoring the earlier SC ruling on such funds' unconstitutionality
as well as salient points in the PIAP. The groups further noted that this pork budget
allocation had ballooned to 27 billion pesos, from the previous year's PHP25 billion
pesos.The groups urged Congress to junk the budget. [27] On November 25, during the
Senate plenary session tackling the said budget, Senator Miriam Defensor-
Santiago raised the same points raised by the Makabayan group in the House of
Representatives hearings, boosting the Makabayan position on the budget bill
amendments.[28]

In January 2015, Palma reiterated the importance of the initiative, saying that
although the Supreme Court had already declared the Priority Development Assistance
Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) as unconstitutional
funds, members of Congress continued to enjoy discretionary funds under other
forms.[23]

Attack on anti-pork campaigner[edit]

On September 29, 2014, minutes after the anti-pork forum in Tagum City, Davao del
Norte, which also launched the PIAP in the province, Dexter Ian Selebrado, 32, of the
group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas - Davao del Norte (Farmers' Movement of the
Philippines - Davao del Norte) and one of the local campaigners against pork barrel
funds, was attacked by motorcycle-riding gunmen.[29] As of October 1, the farmer-
activist was still in critical condition.[30]

Politicians' resistance to the initiative[edit]

In his January 2015 conference with the press, Palma lamented the intervention
of politicians in the turnout of citizens at the signature centers in his parishes. Apart
from a lack of knowledge about the pork barrel, Palma claimed that a low turnout was
also a result of there being families who had children enrolled in schools under
politicians' pork-funded scholarships whose relatives then refused to sign the
proposition. Turnout results in other dioceses were also not good, he said. He
promised, however, that the Church would not be disheartened and cited the strong
support of people in such dioceses as Calbayog City.[23]

The initiative and the pork barrel issue by 2016[edit]

In his blog of July 4, 2016, direct democracy advocate and art critic-painter Jojo Soria
de Veyra, a member of ePIRMA, confessed that after the initiative's launch "the
signature gathering was mostly left to certain parishes of the more organized Catholic
Church, the primary backing of the Cebu Coalition. Sporadic rallies of support were
organized by the Makabayan group and provincial groups. Other members of ePIRMA
were seen to have moved on to various other national concerns. Manny SD Lopez—
ePIRMA's leading convenor and most active campaigner on the road—would also busy
himself with organizing the Christian Peace Alliance, one of the groups advocating for
a drastic review of some provisions of the then-in-its-final-thrust Bangsamoro Basic
Law. Lopez would also form the EdlSA 2.22.15 Coalition, a group that called for
President Benigno Aquino III's resignation after the Mamasapano mishap. I submit
that in this latter period I was not privy anymore to how the signature-gathering for
the initiative on the pork barrel was progressing. I did hear of some pockets of
resistance to the initiative, as well as the Comelec's seeming lack of enthusiasm
towards verifying the signatures, but that's about it. . . . Then came the various noises
leading to the 2016 general election, within which news concerning the initiative's
progress were nowhere anymore to be found on Google." De Veyra, also a convenor of
a Facebook group called Forum for Direct Democracy, then proceeded in his blog to
propose amendments to the Initiative and Referendum Act that would make the law
easier for the people to use as well as obligate Comelec to do its part in the initiative
process within a limited time period.[31]

Meanwhile, on August 31, Senator Panfilo Lacson told the media that "the ₱3.35-
trillion proposed budget presented by Malacañang [under the newly-elected Duterte
administration] to the Senate for congressional approval is laden with 'pork' and
violated the Supreme Court rulings on the Priority Development Assistance Fund and
Disbursement Acceleration Program."[32]

Local initiatives[edit]

Local initiatives, however, appear to be more likely to succeed. The first such initiative,
initiated twelve years after the Initiative and Referendum Act was passed, was
advanced in 2011 in Barangay Miragrosa, Quezon City, with the aim of stopping the
continued influx of informal settlers and the sale of illegal drugs in the barangay. The
initiative passed, with 465 in favor and 384 against out of the 3,665 registered voters
in the barangay eligible to participate.

Difference of impeachment and recall

 is that impeachment is the act of impeaching a public official, either elected or

appointed, before a tribunal charged with determining the facts of the matter
while recall is the action or fact of calling someone or something back.