The Commission on Elections is compelled to reject the People’s Initiative, or PI, petitions when these are presented, based on a precedent ruling.

On 25 August 2006, Raul Lambino and Erico Aumentado filed with Comelec a petition proposing amendments to the 1987 Constitution through a PI.

Among the changes proposed was a shift from a “bicameral presidential to a unicameral parliamentary government.”

The PI’s target was the amendment of Articles 6 and 7 of the Constitution and to “provide an orderly shift from the presidential to the parliamentary system.”

It took the Comelec a week to reject the PI petition.

On 31 August 2006, the Comelec promulgated the resolution denying due course and dismissing the PI petition.

In its decision, Comelec indicated that while it acknowledged the duty to “enforce and administer all laws and regulations” relative to the conduct of a PI, it said the mandate should consider Section 2, Article 17 of the 1987 Constitution, which provides that amendments to the Constitution may “be directly proposed by the people through an initiative, upon petition by 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 voters therein.”

The poll body then noted that the provision was “non-self-executory,” requiring Congress to “provide for the implementation of the exercise of this right.”

That part of the Constitution needed “an enabling law for its implementation.”

It added that Congress enacted RA 6735, or An Act Providing for a System of Initiative and Referendum, intending to breathe life into the constitutional right of the people under an initiative to directly propose, enact, approve, or reject, in whole or in part, changes in the Constitution, laws, ordinances, or resolutions.

The SC, in a 1997 decision in Santiago v. Commission on Elections, considered that law as incomplete, inadequate, or wanting in essential terms and conditions insofar as an initiative on amendments to the Constitution was concerned.

The SC’s ruling permanently barred Comelec from entertaining or taking cognizance of any petition for an initiative on amendments to the Constitution until a sufficient law was enacted to back the PI process.

Even if the signatures in the petition met the required threshold of registered voters, the petition could not be given due course since the Supreme Court categorically declared RA 6735 inadequate to allow this mode for amending the Constitution.

The Comelec then had no recourse but to follow the High Court’s pronouncement that in the absence of a valid enabling law, the PI option remained nothing but an “empty right,” and the poll body was permanently enjoined from taking cognizance of any petition for an initiative to amend the Constitution.

The petitioners then elevated the case to the SC, seeking writs of certiorari and mandamus under Rule 65 of the Rules of Court.

A writ of certiorari asks the court to review a lower tribunal’s exercise of discretion. In contrast, a writ of mandamus is the court’s authority to compel another court or officer to perform a duty.

The 2006 decision of the Supreme Court upheld the Comelec and threw out the signature campaign as insufficient to effect amendments to the Constitution since an enabling law was needed.

In rejecting the mode for amending the Charter, the SC underlined its “primordial duty to defend and protect” the Constitution. 

It added that the “Constitution, which embodies the people’s sovereign will, is the bible of this Court.”

The High Court asserted that to allow a constitutionally infirm initiative, “propelled by deceptively gathered signatures, to alter basic principles in the Constitution is to allow” its desecration.

Going by the tribunal’s perspective, an alteration and desecration of the Charter is to lose the raison d’etre or reason for being of the Court and, in the same train of argument, the democratic principles that civilized nations cherish.