Macalintal v. Presidential Electoral Tribunal

Macalintal v. Presidential Electoral Tribunal

G.R. No. 191618 June 7, 2011

Nachura, J.

Issue:

                whether or not Section 4, Article VII of the Constitution does not provide for the creation of the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET); whether or not the PET violates Section 12, Article VIII of the Constitution

Held:

                A plain reading of Article VII, Section 4, paragraph 7, readily reveals a grant of authority to the Supreme Court sitting en banc. In the same vein, although the method by which the Supreme Court exercises this authority is not specified in the provision, the grant of power does not contain any limitation on the Supreme Court’s exercise thereof. The Supreme Court’s method of deciding presidential and vice-presidential election contests, through the PET, is actually a derivative of the exercise of the prerogative conferred by the aforequoted constitutional provision. Thus, the subsequent directive in the provision for the Supreme Court to “promulgate its rules for the purpose.”

The conferment of full authority to the Supreme Court, as a PET, is equivalent to the full authority conferred upon the electoral tribunals of the Senate and the House of Representatives, i.e., the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) and the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET)

Next, petitioner still claims that the PET exercises quasi-judicial power and, thus, its members violate the proscription in Section 12, Article VIII of the Constitution, which reads:

SEC. 12. The Members of the Supreme Court and of other courts established by law shall not be designated to any agency performing quasi-judicial or administrative functions.

The traditional grant of judicial power is found in Section 1, Article VIII of the Constitution which provides that the power “shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such lower courts as may be established by law.” Consistent with our presidential system of government, the function of “dealing with the settlement of disputes, controversies or conflicts involving rights, duties or prerogatives that are legally demandable and enforceable” is apportioned to courts of justice. With the advent of the 1987 Constitution, judicial power was expanded to include “the duty of the courts of justice to settle actual controversies involving rights which are legally demandable and enforceable, and to determine whether or not there has been a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of any branch or instrumentality of the Government.” The power was expanded, but it remained absolute.

The set up embodied in the Constitution and statutes characterizes the resolution of electoral contests as essentially an exercise of judicial power.

At the barangay and municipal levels, original and exclusive jurisdiction over election contests is vested in the municipal or metropolitan trial courts and the regional trial courts, respectively.

At the higher levels — city, provincial, and regional, as well as congressional and senatorial — exclusive and original jurisdiction is lodged in the COMELEC and in the House of Representatives and Senate Electoral Tribunals,which are not, strictly and literally speaking, courts of law. Although not courts of law, they are, nonetheless, empowered to resolve election contests which involve, in essence, an exercise of judicial power, because of the explicit constitutional empowerment found in Section 2(2), Article IX-C (for the COMELEC) and Section 17, Article VI (for the Senate and House Electoral Tribunals) of the Constitution. Besides, when the COMELEC, the HRET, and the SET decide election contests, their decisions are still subject to judicial review — via a petition for certiorari filed by the proper party — if there is a showing that the decision was rendered with grave abuse of discretion tantamount to lack or excess of jurisdiction.

It is also beyond cavil that when the Supreme Court, as PET, resolves a presidential or vice-presidential election contest, it performs what is essentially a judicial power.

The present Constitution has allocated to the Supreme Court, in conjunction with latter’s exercise of judicial power inherent in all courts, the task of deciding presidential and vice-presidential election contests, with full authority in the exercise thereof. The power wielded by PET is a derivative of the plenary judicial power allocated to courts of law, expressly provided in the Constitution.

Note:

The PET is not simply an agency to which Members of the Court were designated. Once again, the PET, as intended by the framers of the Constitution, is to be an institutionindependent, but not separate, from the judicial department, i.e., the Supreme Court.