Case Digest: Macalintal v.

PET (Second Version)

G.R. No. 191618: November 23, 2010

ATTY. ROMULO B. MACALINTAL, Petitioner, v. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORAL TRIBUNAL,

Respondent.

NACHURA, J.:

FACTS:

Atty. Romulo B. Macalintal (Atty. Macalintal) files a petition before the SC, challenging the constitutionality
of Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) as an illegal and unauthorized progeny of Section 4, Article VII of
the Constitution, which provides:

The Supreme Court, sitting en banc, shall be the sole judge of all contests relating to the election, returns,
and qualifications of the President or Vice-President, and may promulgate its rules for the purpose.

While petitioner concedes that the Supreme Court is "authorized to promulgate its rules for the purpose,"
he chafes at the creation of a purportedly "separate tribunal" complemented by a budget allocation, a
seal, a set of personnel and confidential employees, to effect the constitutional mandate.

ISSUE: Whether or not petitioner has locus standi

Whether or not PET is unconstitutional

HELD: No. Petition Denied

POLITICAL LAW- The constitutional question must be raised at the earliest possible opportunity

petitioners standing is still imperiled by the white elephant in the petition, i.e., his appearance as counsel
for former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (Macapagal-Arroyo) in the election protest filed by 2004
presidential candidate Fernando Poe, Jr. before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, because judicial
inquiry, as mentioned above, requires that the constitutional question be raised at the earliest possible
opportunity. Such appearance as counsel before the Tribunal, to our mind, would have been the first
opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of the Tribunals constitution.

Petitioner is unmistakably estopped from assailing the jurisdiction of the PET before which tribunal he had
ubiquitously appeared and had acknowledged its jurisdiction in 2004. His failure to raise a seasonable
constitutional challenge at that time, coupled with his unconditional acceptance of the Tribunals authority
over the case he was defending, translates to the clear absence of an indispensable requisite for the
proper invocation of this Courts power of judicial review. Even on this score alone, the petition ought to be
dismissed outright.

POLITICAL LAW- The conferment of additional jurisdiction to the Supreme Court, with the duty
characterized as an "awesome" task, includes the means necessary to carry it into effect under
the doctrine of necessary implication.

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 Courts 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), which we have
affirmed on numerous occasions.

Republic Act No. 1793 has not created a new or separate court. It has merely conferred upon the
Supreme Court the functions of a Presidential Electoral Tribunal. The result of the enactment may be
likened to the fact that courts of first instance perform the functions of such ordinary courts of first
instance, those of court of land registration, those of probate courts, and those of courts of juvenile and
domestic relations. It is, also, comparable to the situation obtaining when the municipal court of a
provincial capital exercises its authority, pursuant to law, over a limited number of cases which were
previously within the exclusive jurisdiction of courts of first instance.

By the same token, the PET is not a separate and distinct entity from the Supreme Court, albeit it has
functions peculiar only to the Tribunal. It is obvious that the PET was constituted in implementation of
Section 4, Article VII of the Constitution, and it faithfully complies not unlawfully defies the constitutional
directive. The adoption of a separate seal, as well as the change in the nomenclature of the Chief Justice
and the Associate Justices into Chairman and Members of the Tribunal, respectively, was designed
simply to highlight the singularity and exclusivity of the Tribunals functions as a special electoral court.

We have previously declared that 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 institution
independent, but not separate, from the judicial department, i.e., the Supreme Court.