Guazon v. De Villa

Guazon v. De Villa

G.R. No. 80508 January 30, 1990

Gutierrez, Jr., J.

Facts:

                This is a petition for prohibition with preliminary injunction to prohibit the military and police officers represented by public respondents from conducting “Areal Target Zonings” or “Saturation Drives” in Metro Manila.

The forty one (41) petitioners state that they are all of legal age, bona fide residents of Metro Manila and taxpayers and leaders in their respective communities. They maintain that they have a common or general interest in the preservation of the rule of law, protection of their human rights and the reign of peace and order in their communities.

According to the petitioners, the “areal target zonings” or saturation drives” are in critical areas pinpointed by the military and police as places where the subversives are hiding. The arrests range from seven (7) persons during the July 20 saturation drive in Bangkusay, Tondo to one thousand five hundred (1,500) allegedly apprehended on November 3 during the drive at Lower Maricaban, Pasay City. The petitioners claim that the saturation drives follow a common pattern of human rights abuses.

Insofar as the legal basis for saturation drives is concerned, the respondents cite Article VII, Section 17 of the Constitution which provides:

The President shall have control of all the executive departments, bureaus and offices. He shall ensure that the laws be faithfully executed. (Emphasis supplied )

They also cite Section 18 of the same Article which provides:

The President shall be the Commander-in-Chief of all armed forces of the Philippines and whenever it becomes necessary, he may call out such armed forces to prevent or suppress lawless violence, invasion or rebellion. ...

Issue:

                whether the saturation drives infringe Sections 17 and 18, Article VI of the Constitution

Held:

                There is nothing in the Constitution which denies the authority of the Chief Executive, invoked by the Solicitor General, to order police actions to stop unabated criminality, rising lawlessness, and alarming communist activities. The Constitution grants to Government the power to seek and cripple subversive movements which would bring down constituted authority and substitute a regime where individual liberties are suppressed as a matter of policy in the name of security of the State. However, all police actions are governed by the limitations of the Bill of Rights. The Government cannot adopt the same reprehensible methods of authoritarian systems both of the right and of the left, the enlargement of whose spheres of influence it is trying hard to suppress.

Where there is large scale mutiny or actual rebellion, the police or military may go in force to the combat areas, enter affected residences or buildings, round up suspected rebels and otherwise quell the mutiny or rebellion without having to secure search warrants and without violating the Bill of Rights.

The areal target zonings in this petition were intended to flush out subversives and criminal elements particularly because of the blatant assassinations of public officers and police officials by elements supposedly coddled by the communities where the “drives” were conducted.

It is clear from the pleadings of both petitioners and respondents, however, that there was no rebellion or criminal activity similar to that of the attempted coup d’ etats. There appears to have been no impediment to securing search warrants or warrants of arrest before any houses were searched or individuals roused from sleep were arrested. There is no strong showing that the objectives sought to be attained by the “areal zoning” could not be achieved even as the rights of squatter and low income families are fully protected.

Where a violation of human rights specifically guaranteed by the Constitution is involved, it is the duty of the court to stop the transgression and state where even the awesome power of the state may not encroach upon the rights of the individual. It is the duty of the court to take remedial action even in cases such as the present petition where the petitioners do not complain that they were victims of the police actions, where no names of any of the thousands of alleged victims are given, and where the prayer is a general one to stop all police “saturation drives,” as long as the Court is convinced that the event actually happened.