At any rate, the Senate, through Senate President Franklin Drilon has announced that it will file a petition with the Supreme Court to prevent the Comelec from conducting its verification of signatures. Some opposition congressmen are poised to follow suit.
In light of the emotion and partisanship that characterizes this debate, it’s often difficult to present an objective analysis of the rulings in Santiago. But I’ll take the chance anyway, in the hope that if the Court does take cognizance of the case, it will resolve the controversy and finally get the matter behind us.
The mistake is to believe that Santiago vs. Comelec gives us final and definitive answers that resolve all the problems we face today on the legality of both the people’s initiative and the Comelec’s signature verification process. In fact, the case does not.
To begin with, it is true that the Court ordered the Comelec to dismiss the petition for initiative filed with it. Why? Because the petition did not contain the number of votes required by the Constitution and by R.A. No. 6735, assuming but not legally conceding that the law was an adequate enabling law. Without those requisite signatures, the Court ruled, that petition could not be deemed validly filed.
But the Court specifically stated that before such a petition is filed, the participation of the Comelec is limited to, among other things, verifying the signatures, through election registrars, on the basis of the registry list of voters, voters’ affidavits and voters’ identification cards. In other words, the Court allowed such verification. This is principally why the Comelec insists that it is acting legally in verifying the signatures claimed to make up the requisite number for a people’s initiative.
Further, apropos of the signature drive of ostensibly private organizations such as Sigaw ng Bayan and Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), the Supreme Court did not rule that such a signature drive is illegal for lack of an enabling law.
On the contrary, the Court LIFTED a temporary restraining order against the "private respondents," the petitioner in that ill-fated petition before the Comelec and the Pedrosa couple, Alberto and Carmen, who were impleaded in their capacity as founding members of People’s Initiative for Reforms, Modernization and Action (PIRMA).
The Court, however, didn’t say why it lifted that TRO. We are thus left to consulting the dissenting opinions of Justice (now Chief Justice) Artemio Panganiban and Justice (now Senior Justice) Reynato Puno to divine the reasons. Justice Panganiban said: "The right to propose amendments to the Constitution is really a species of the right of free speech and free assembly…(I)t would be tyrannical and despotic to stop anyone from speaking freely and persuading others to conform to his/her beliefs."
Justice Puno declared: "The Court cannot halt any and all signature campaigns to amend the Constitution without setting back the flowering of people empowerment. More important, the Court cannot seal the lips of people who are pro-change but not those who are anti-change without converting the debate on Charter change into a sterile talkathon."
Finally, Santiago vs. Comelec did not resolve the hot-button issue of whether the proposed changes in that case – lifting the term limits of the President, Vice-President, Senators, congressmen and all elected local officials, except barangay officials – were amendments or revisions. The Constitution allows only amendments in a people’s initiative, not revisions. Neither did the Court enrich jurisprudence on precisely what the difference is between an amendment and a revision.
Despite devoting several pages in the decision to ascertaining that the 1987 Constitution deliberately adopted such a distinction, the Court wound up stating that, in view of its basic finding that R.A. No. 6735 was not an adequate enabling law, it was unnecessary to decide whether the proposed changes were permitted amendments or proscribed revisions of the charter.
Jurisprudentially, then, we remain impoverished on this issue. The debate continues on what difference, if any, exists between the two concepts and whether certain proposals constitute an amendment or a revision.
As we’ve noted in previous columns, in the deliberations of the 1987 Constitutional Commission, the asserted difference was that a revision involves a rewriting of the whole Constitution while amendments envision changes of specific provisions only. In his commentaries on that Constitution, however, Fr. Joaquin Bernas S.J. elucidated that distinction to include within the meaning of revision any contemplated change which has overall implications for the entire document or for the "fundamental philosophical underpinnings" of the document.
The Supreme Court has not adopted the Bernas approach, certainly not in Santiago. While scholarly opinion may be helpful in interpreting law, it is not law or jurisprudence. But the Court might still make definitive pronouncements on the matter, if it reconsiders the matter in the context of the proposed shift to a parliamentary system.
On the other hand, Santiago makes it clear that R.A. No. 6735 is an incomplete and inadequate enabling law on initiative. This is the rule now. Unless and until it is reversed by the Court, it will remain the rule.
There seems to be good basis for the belief that the Supreme Court may review this rule, and it’s not just because of "the numbers." It is true that the fact that only two of the Justices in the Santiago court remain, and they happen to be among the dissenters in that case, does not necessarily indicate how a review of the decision may turn out.
But if you read the dissents of Justices Panganiban and Puno carefully, particularly their reasons for believing that R.A. No. 6375 was an adequate enabling law, you might get a clue of how they might stand in a review of Santiago. It’s not just the numbers, it’s the basic principles they reiterate that are compelling.
If only to put a welcome end to the posturing of both sides, I hope the Supreme Court puts clarity in the muddled situation wrought by Santiago vs. Comelec. Pronto!