MA. CAROLINA P.
Remedial law; Certiorari and prohibition. The
ARAULLO ET AL. v.
BENIGNO SIMEON
C. AQUINO III ET
AL., G.R. NO.
209287, July 1, 2014
In a Decision dated July 1, 2014, the Supreme
Court partially granted the consolidated
petitions for certiorari and prohibition and
declared the following acts and practices
under the Disbursement Acceleration Program
(DAP), National Budget Circular No. 541 and
related executive issuances unconstitutional
for violating Section 25(5), Article VI of the
1987 Constitution and the doctrine of
separation of powers, namely:
(a) The withdrawal of unobligated allotments
from the implementing agencies, and the
declaration of the withdrawn unobligated
allotments and unreleased appropriations as
savings prior to the end of the fiscal year and
without complying with the statutory definition
of savings contained in the General
Appropriations Acts;
(b) The cross-border transfers of the savings
of the Executive to augment the
appropriations of other offices outside the
Executive; and
(c) The funding of projects, activities and
programs that were not covered by any
appropriation in the General Appropriations
Acts.
The Court further declared void the use of
unprogrammed funds despite the absence of
a certification by the National Treasurer that
the revenue collections exceeded the revenue
targets for non-compliance with the conditions
provided in the relevant General
Appropriations Acts (GAAs).
remedies of certiorari and prohibition are
necessarily broader in scope and reach, and
the writ of certiorari or prohibition may
be issued to correct errors of
jurisdiction committed not only by a tribunal,
corporation, board or officer
exercising judicial, quasi-judicial or ministerial
functions but also to set right, undo
and restrain any act of grave abuse of
discretion amounting to lack or excess
of jurisdiction by any branch or instrumentality
of the Government, even if the latter does not
exercise judicial, quasi-judicial or ministerial
functions. Thus, petitions for certiorari and
prohibition are appropriate remedies to raise
constitutional issues and to review and/or
prohibit or nullify the acts of legislative and
executive officials.
Remedial law; Locus standi. Citing De Castro
v. Judicial and Bar Council, the Supreme
Court ruled that the assertion of a public right
as a predicate for challenging a supposedly
illegal or unconstitutional executive
or legislative action rests on the theory that
the petitioner represents the public in general.
Although such petitioner may not be as
adversely affected by the action complained
against as are others, it is enough that
he sufficiently demonstrates in his petition that
he is entitled to protection or relief from the
Court in the vindication of a public right. The
Court likewise cited Agan, Jr. v.
Philippine International Air Terminals Co., Inc.,
to explain that [s]tanding is a peculiar
concept in constitutional law because in
some cases, suits are not brought by
parties who have been personally injured
by the operation of a law or any
other government act but by concerned
citizens, taxpayers or voters who actually sue
in the public interest.
Transcendental importance as a ground to
waive locus standi. Each of the petitioners
has established sufficient interest in the
outcome of the controversy as to confer locus
standi on each of them. In addition,
considering that the issues center on the
extent of the power of the Chief Executive to
disburse and allocate public funds,
whether appropriated by Congress or not,
these cases pose issues that are
of transcendental importance to the entire
Nation, the petitioners included. As such, the
determination of such important issues call for
the Courts exercise of its broad and wise
discretion to waive the requirement and so
remove the impediment to its addressing and
resolving the serious constitutional questions
raised.
Administrative law; Budget process;
Implementation and funding of the
Disbursement Allocation Program (DAP). Four
phases comprise the Philippine budget
process, specifically: (1) Budget Preparation;
(2) Budget Legislation; (3) Budget Execution;
and (4) Accountability.
The DAP was to be implemented and funded
(1) by declaring savings coming from the
various departments and agencies derived
from pooling unobligated allotments and
withdrawing unreleased appropriations; (2)
releasing unprogrammed funds; and (3)
applying the savings and
unprogrammed funds to augment existing
[program, activity or project] or to support
other priority PAPs.
Administrative law; Nature of the DAP. The
DAP was a government policy or strategy
designed to stimulate the economy through
accelerated spending. In the context of the
DAPs adoption and implementation being a
function pertaining to the Executive as the
main actor during the Budget Execution
Stage under its constitutional mandate to
faithfully execute the laws, including the
GAAs, Congress did not need to legislate to
adopt or to implement the DAP.
Constitutional law; The DAP is not an
appropriation measure and does not
contravene Section 29(1), Article VI. The
President, in keeping with his duty to
faithfully execute the laws, had sufficient
discretion during the execution of the
budget to adapt the budget to changes in the
countrys economic situation. He could adopt
a plan like the DAP for the purpose. He could
pool the savings and identify the PAPs to be
funded under the DAP. The pooling of
savings pursuant to the DAP, and the
identification of the PAPs to be funded
under the DAP did not involve appropriation
in the strict sense because the money had
been already set apart from the public
treasury by Congress through the GAAs. In
such actions, the Executive did not usurp the
power vested in Congress under Section
29(1), Article VI of the Constitution [that no
money shall be paid out of the
Treasury except in pursuance of
an appropriation made by law].
Requisites of a valid transfer of appropriated
funds under Section 25(5), Article VI. The
transfer of appropriated funds, to be valid
under Section 25(5), [Article VI of the
Constitution], must be made upon a
concurrence of the following
requisites, namely: (1) There is a law
authorizing the President, the President of the
Senate, the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, the Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, and the heads of the
Constitutional Commissions to transfer funds
within their respective offices; (2) The funds to
be transferred are savings generated from
the appropriations for their respective offices;
and (3) The purpose of the transfer is to
augment an item in the general appropriations
law for their respective offices.
It is then indubitable that the power to
augment was to be used only when the
purpose for which the funds had been
allocated were already satisfied, or the need
for such funds had ceased to exist, for only
then could savings be properly realized.
This interpretation prevents the Executive
from unduly transgressing Congress power of
the purse.
Savings, defined. The definition of savings
under the 2011, 2012 and 2013 GAAs refer to
portions or balances of any
programmed appropriation in this Act free
from any obligation or encumbrance
which are: (i) still available after the
completion or final discontinuance
or abandonment of the work, activity or
purpose for which the appropriation is
authorized; (ii) from appropriations balances
arising from unpaid compensation and related
costs pertaining to vacant positions and
leaves of absence without pay; and (iii)
from appropriations balances realized from
the implementation of measures resulting in
improved systems and efficiencies and
thus enabled agencies to meet and deliver the
required or planned targets.
The Court agreed with petitioners that
respondents were forcing the generation
of savings in order to have a larger fund
available for discretionary spending.
Respondents, by withdrawing unobligated
allotments in the middle of the fiscal year, in
effect deprived funding for PAPs with existing
appropriations under the GAAs.
The mandate of Section 28, Chapter IV, Book
VI of the Administrative Code is to revert to
the General Fund balances of appropriations
that remained unexpended at the end of the
fiscal year. The Executive could not
circumvent this provision by
declaring unreleased appropriations and
unobligated allotments as savings prior to
the end of the fiscal year.
Augmentation is valid only when funding is
deficient. The GAAs for 2011, 2012 and 2013
set as a condition for augmentation that the
appropriation for the PAP item to be
augmented must be deficient, to wit: x x x
Augmentation implies the existence in this Act
of a program, activity, or project with an
appropriation, which upon implementation,
or subsequent evaluation of needed
resources, is determined to be deficient. In no
case shall a non-existent program, activity, or
project, be funded by augmentation from
savings or by the use of
appropriations otherwise authorized in this
Act.
The President cannot substitute his own will
for that of Congress. The Court held that the
savings pooled under the DAP were
allocated to PAPs that were not covered by
any appropriations in the pertinent
GAAs. Although the [Office of the Solicitor
General] rightly contends that the Executive
was authorized to spend in line with its
mandate to faithfully execute the laws
(which included the GAAs), such authority did
not translate to unfettered discretion that
allowed the President to substitute his own will
for that of Congress. He was still required to
remain faithful to the provisions of the GAAs,
given that his power to spend pursuant to the
GAAs was but a delegation to him from
Congress. Verily, the power to spend the
public wealth resided in Congress, not in the
Executive. Moreover, leaving the spending
power of the Executive unrestricted would
threaten to undo the principle of separation of
powers.
Cross-border transfers or augmentations are
prohibited. By providing that the President, the
President of the Senate, the Speaker of the
House of Representatives, the Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, and the Heads of the
Constitutional Commissions may be
authorized to augment any item in the GAA
for their respective offices, Section 25(5) has
delineated borders between their offices, such
that funds appropriated for one office are
prohibited from crossing over to another office
even in the guise of augmentation of a
deficient item or items. Thus, we call such
transfers of funds cross-border transfers or
cross-border augmentations.
Regardless of the variant characterizations of
the cross-border transfers of funds, the plain
text of Section 25(5) disallowing cross-border
transfers was disobeyed. Cross-border
transfers, whether as augmentation, or as aid,
are prohibited under Section 25(5).
No violation of equal
protection. Petitioners claim that the Executive
discriminated against some legislators on the
ground alone of their receiving less than the
others could not of itself warrant a finding of
contravention of the Equal Protection Clause.
The denial of equal protection of any law
should be an issue to be raised only by parties
who supposedly suffer it, and, in these cases,
such parties would be the few legislators
claimed to have been discriminated against in
the releases of funds under the DAP. The
reason for the requirement is that only such
affected legislators could properly and fully
bring to the fore when and how the denial of
equal protection occurred, and explain why
there was a denial in their situation. The
requirement was not met here.
Operative fact doctrine. The doctrine of
operative fact recognizes the existence of the
law or executive act prior to the determination
of its unconstitutionality as an operative fact
that produced consequences that cannot
always be erased, ignored or disregarded. In
short, it nullifies the void law or executive act
but sustains its effects. It provides an
exception to the general rule that a void or
unconstitutional law produces no effect. But its
use must be subjected to great scrutiny and
circumspection, and it cannot be invoked to
validate an unconstitutional law or executive
act, but is resorted to only as a matter of
equity and fair play. It applies only to cases
where extraordinary circumstances exist, and
only when the extraordinary circumstances
have met the stringent conditions that will
permit its application.
The operative fact doctrine applies to the
implementation of the DAP. To declare the
implementation of the DAP unconstitutional
without recognizing that its prior
implementation constituted an operative fact
that produced consequences in the real as
well as juristic worlds of the Government and
the Nation is to be impractical and unfair.
Unless the doctrine is held to apply, the
Executive as the disburser and the offices
under it and elsewhere as the recipients could
be required to undo everything that they had
implemented in good faith under the
DAP. That scenario would be enormously
burdensome for the Government. Equity
alleviates such burden.
With the decision in the consolidated
case of Araullo v. Aquino III, the
Supreme Court had found the
Disbursement Acceleration Program
(DAP) of the administration of
President Benigno S. Aquino
partially constitutional, partially
unconstitutional.
In its wake, as seen in the news,
critics have gladly seized on DAPs
partial unconstitutionality to raise
scenarios of impeachment against
the President, or raised calls for the
resignation of Budget Secretary
Florencio Butch Abad.
These criticisms ride on the popular
anger against pork barrel freely-
disbursed lump sum allocations such
as the Priority Development
Assistance Fund (PDAF) declared
unconstitutional in Belgica v.
Executive Secretary this time
aimed at Malacaang rather than
Congress.
We will not join the bandwagon. We
do not support the impeachment of
the president and we leave it up to
Secretary Abad, an exemplary public
official by any standard, to discern
whether his resignation will benefit
the country. We trust he will make
the right decision.
In this article, we think beyond this
politics of outrage, which could just
be a moment or are warnings of
major upheavals ahead, and reflect
on the longer term political and
governance implications of the DAP
decision.
A judicial challenge to an act of the
executive (or the legislative, for that
matter), is ultimately an act that
seeks to limit an instance of the
exercise of that governmental power
when done right, in an effort to curb
abuse and protect what is right. In
parsing DAP, in declaring some of
Aquinos actions constitutional, and
some unconstitutional, the Supreme
Court had essentially left the
Presidents prerogative to augment
proper budget expenditures from
proper budget savings intact, but
clearly defined what augmentation
is not.
What augmentation is, according to
the ponencia, and defined in Art. VI,
Sec. 25 (5) of the 1987 Constitution,
and authorized within each years
General Appropriations Act (GAA), is
the use of clearly-identified savings
in the expenditures of government
departments and offices to augment
clearly-identified, actual deficiencies
within those respective government
departments and offices. What
augmentation is not, however, is to
allocate what was not authorized as
an expenditure in the GAA. It is not a
transfer of executive department
savings to legislative lump sum
allocations (cross-border
augmentation) by virtue of the
latters unconstitutionality, or at the
very least, because such itself
violates Art. VI Sec. 25 (5).
Savings
There, too, was a problem in
addressing the definition of actual
savings that is the source of
augmentations. To quote from
the ponencia, actual savings, strictly
speaking, is the money left over from
GAA-authorized items which are
authorized was completed, finally
discontinued, or abandoned; or
because the policy targets were
reached at lower cost due to
increased efficiencies; or because of
vacant government positions or
leaves-of-absence without
pay. Araullo held that it did not
contemplate the use of money that
had yet to be used: the controversial
unobligated allotments of slow-
moving government projects; or the
unprogrammed funds, which are
standby appropriations authorized in
the GAA, which are available only
under specific circumstances and
conditions. One of DAPs errors, but
a critical one, was that it considered
funds otherwise not considered by
law as actual savings, as actual
savings, making them available for
disbursement by the President.
As with Belgica, Araullo exposes the
underbelly of Philippine money
politics: the roles and powers over
the budget-crossing borders. With
PDAF, it was the legislature getting
an all-but-assured slice of the pie for
legislators to spend on their own
programs as they see fit; a
usurpation of executive roles. With
the unconstitutional portions of DAP,
it was the Chief Executive allocating
savings and unprogrammed funds to
projects or programs independent of
authorized GAA allocations
(including DAP handovers to
legislators); a usurpation of
legislative functions. It would be
crude but otherwise uncomfortably
close to the mark to describe a
DAPed president as a mini-
Congress, and a PDAFed legislator
as a mini-president.
Yet this confluence and contradiction
of roles has likely subsisted in the
foundations of Philippine politics-in-
practice certainly
since PHILCONSA v.
Enriquez earlier ruled pork barrel as
constitutional, allowing the practice to
continue with judicial leave. For all
the diatribes raised against Aquino in
the wake of the PDAF scandal, the
truth is that, as with his
predecessors, he had inherited prior
practices of Philippine government
that have become so ingrained in
political culture.
Malice
Other than outright malice (which has
to be proven first!), nothing else but
the honest belief that pork is right (if
used right) would have motivated
congressmen who cried foul and
threats of impeachment over Belgica.
And I do believe (despite others that
claim otherwise) that what motivated
the administration on the exercise of
and its defensiveness with DAP was
not the malice they denounce, but a
similar honest belief that the
Executive could reallocate unused
money as it did, for the good of the
nation.
Ironically, it was Aquinos own high
standards of daang matuwid that
allowed the Court to resolve the DAP
question as it did or for the
question to explode into public
consciousness as it did. The records
of the case will reflect the packages
of memoranda and orders in relation
to DAP money movements: amply
documented and volunteered upon
summons.
Admittedly, and as will be elaborated
later, an audit will still be necessary
to uncover the full story of DAP (and
the Court did note that documents
relating to DAPs conceptualization
were scarce), but the evidence
package offered in Court was
enough for the Justices to parse how
the President exercised his powers,
the bone of contention in Araullo.
If anything, such level of
documentary detail, readily
presented upon order, would be
evidence of good faith on the part of
the administration. Which is where
our discussion now turns to the
question of impeachment against
Aquino, or calls for Abad to resign.
Ever since last year, there has been
an undercurrent of vindictiveness in
the campaign against pork.
Understandable, given the scale of
the scandal, and the defenses
offered by all the parties under attack
whether Senators Enrile, Estrada,
or Revilla; or Aquino or Abad that
some feel are just attempts to deflect
or delay the inevitable condemnation.
And we feel that anger in critical op-
eds, or the vitriol in the comment
boards of news outfits and social
media.
Unconstitutional but not criminal
Yet here we must demur. Legally and
morally, to condemn requires proper
evidence culpable violation in case
of impeachment, or the commission
of the elements of the crime charged,
in case of criminal prosecution. As
Professor Randy David observed in
his Inquirer column, reflecting on his
arrest in the wake of President
Arroyos Proclamation 1017, a policy
being unconstitutional does not
always mean the policy-maker being
criminal or culpable for that matter.
Justice Marvic Leonen pointed it out
clearly in his separate opinion: to
rule that a declaration of
unconstitutionality per se is the basis
for determining liability is a
dangerous proposition. It is not
proper that there are suggestions of
administrative or criminal liability
even before the proper charges are
raised, investigated, and filed.
If we keep insisting that government
officials should always be held liable,
especially criminally liable, for acts
subsequently declared to be
unconstitutional by the Court, then all
government would be paralyzed by
terror, unable to exercise such
powers even granted to them by the
Constitution, for fear of the next
prosecution (whether truly aggrieved
or politically motivated) thrown in
their direction.
The Supreme Court may be the final
arbiter of constitutionality, but by
virtue of separation of powers, the
Executive and Legislature get first
crack at interpretation of the
constitutionality of their acts
(contemporaneous construction).
Such interpretation is still open to
challenge by any aggrieved party,
but a principle of law is that
constitutionality is generally
presumed; its unconstitutionality
must be proved. Until proven
otherwise, the law grants the
President or Congress the benefit of
the doubt.
Absent further evidence on malicious
or culpable acts of the
Administration, it is enough
that Araulloreestablishes the proper
budget-handling borders of the
separated powers of government.
Governance
This leads us to our next set of
implications: governance. As pork
had become ingrained in national
politics, it had also wormed its way
into governance, into the
implementation of policy and the
spending of money on policy. PDAF
again demonstrates how dependent
public services, even those provided
by NGOs, were on the largesse of
legislators, such that the system
could be manipulated with ghost
NGOs. It feeds into the patronage
politics of Philippine governance: that
public services and the benefits
every citizen receives, by law, from
government is held hostage by the
political elite, who can then extract
staying power and the occasional
graft from his constituency and
budgetary allocation.
It should be noted that the same
Secretary Abad critics are now wont
to hang for DAP, is the same
Secretary Abad who declared, in his
Metrobank Professorial Chair lecture
last year at the Ateneo School of
Government, that the budget could
be a tool for citizen empowerment
(particularly though inclusive
budgeting reforms introduced under
his watch, such as bottom-up
budgeting).
Weeding governance of bad
budgetary habits strengthens good
and responsive governance.
Subjecting government allocations
and allotments to stricter scrutiny and
controls, thanks to the restoration of
the borders, will ultimately help in
restoring fiscal credibility to
Philippine governance: the
legislature authorizes where the
money goes, the executive releases
the money to such expenditures, with
the citizenry participating at the
budget planning, deliberation, and
execution stages, either through their
elected representatives or as citizen
organizations.
Still, good governance has up to 27
years to catch up on a history of bad
budgetary habits, since the
restoration of traditional political
dynamics following the fall of the
Marcos regime. In the short term,
government and citizenry both will
have to break some of those habits:
congressionally-branded
scholarships and free clinics; the
basketball courts and multi-purpose
halls, that seem to be the low-
hanging fruit of GAA allocations to
public works.
Padrino system
There will likely be a painful adjusting
period as constituents suddenly find
themselves without apadrino,
learning instead political habits of
interest aggregation, interfacing with
representatives and bureaucrats, of
leveraging policy planning and
execution to their benefit. As our
colleagues have found in the G-
Watch project, this learning process
is more needed and more painful
outside the cities, in the bailiwicks of
trapo dynasties, and among a
population so used to binyag-kasal-
libing interaction with their political
representatives.
Padrinos and trapo dynasties may
seem more the terrain of Congress,
but Abads concept of budget-as-
empowering is sorely needed in
Malacaang as well. Keynesian
economics does hold that
government spending does have a
stimulus effect on the economy
Justice Leonens concurrence
to Araullo noted this; exemplified by
the World Bank report cited in the
majority that found DAP to have
contributed 1.3% to the 2011 gross
domestic product growth.
Yet a dependence on DAP as a
stimulus tool may yet breed
dependence on executive
augmentations in the name of
economic growth.
In the earlier-referred Metrobank
lecture, Abad had rightly described
the national budget as an arena of
struggle among competing interests
but heretofore that struggle and
those interests were assumed to be
in congressional deliberation, not
executive execution. This is the
danger implied in Araullos finding
that augmentations made outside of
GAA line items were unconstitutional,
as were cross-border releases to
Congress.
The accusation that DAP may have
been used to secure the votes
needed for Chief Justice Renato
Coronas impeachment, or the RH
Bills passage, stings the most in this
regard. True or untrue (or simply very
uncomfortable timing), it has become
highly embarrassing for the Office of
the President at the least. At most, it
makes the Office of the President as
much a padrino of his own
constituency (e.g., Congress) as a
local political lord.
Mitigating such dangers requires
robust
accountability. Araullo complements
Belgica by delineating, once and for
all, the roles and functions of the
branches of government in the
budgetary process. It is easier to
color within the lines, after all, when
the lines themselves are clear.
Accountability
Judicial decisions alone, however,
will not color between the lines, so to
speak. Financial accountability is the
reserve of the system of checks and
balances among the branches of
government
(which Araulloand Belgica thankfully
clarify), and of the Commission of
Audit, its raison detre.
It also ought to be the resolve of
citizens to watch over the effective
and equitable expenditure of public
funds through project monitoring, and
working with government a cause
our school, the Ateneo School of
Government, has championed
through the social accountability
framework.
However, there is something
Malacaang ought to do now, in the
wake of Araullo. So far, what has
been made public by court action
were the DAP-related memos and
subsequent documentation of the
Office of the President. As noted in
the ponencia, other documents
remain to be revealed, such as the
decision-making process behind
DAPs creation, and of course the
proverbial paper trail of the money,
especially once it left executive
hands. This goes double for the
releases to legislators, in case it can
help clarify the paper trail in the
PDAF cases on file now and later,
and to clarify which personalities or
programs may benefit from the
doctrine of operative fact under a
good-faith defense (as Justice
Antonio Carpio cautions in his
separate opinion).
We would like to repeat, however,
that this exercise in accountability
must not turn into an exercise of
vindictiveness. Accountability based
on threat (or at least threat alone), a
climate of fear of the hangmans
noose, will not be sustainable. Where
liabilities can be established, as
Justice Leonen observed, there the
proper cases may be filed (and if the
travails of the PDAF prosecution
team be instructive, then those
liabilities must be thoroughly
established).
But as with the Benhur Luy
revelations, Araullo can help guide
everyones hand in establishing a
better structure of public finance
management and accountability.
Fully threshing out this promise is
best left to a future article, but suffice
to say
that Araullo and Belgica mitigate, if
not eliminate, the risks opened up by
the earlier PHILCONSA ruling.
The administrations habit of
documentation, too, is a hopeful
portent of practices to come, and a
willingness of Aquino officials to
further disclose the extents and
consequences of DAP in the name of
accountability and better governance
design. (Besides, a working
Keynesian stimulus is a good
achievement, especially for an
administration earlier criticized for
dragging its feet on post-Arroyo
government spending.)
Admit mistakes
And to help stimulate both
accountability and discussions for
governance redesign, here we must
submit unsolicited, but hopefully
useful, advice for the administration,
to tone down the self-righteous
defensiveness.
Araullo, as well as Aquinos
forthcoming submission of the
requested evidences, already point
to good faith exercised in the
execution of DAP. The presidential
prerogative for constitutional
augmentation has not been stripped.
It is possible to look at the Supreme
Court decision as a starting point for
dialogue and reform. As with
persons, it helps for governments to
admit their mistakes as a step
towards reconciliation and recovery.
It also helps that the populace be
ready to dialogue with its mistaken,
but cooperative, government but
we have already stressed this point
in previous paragraphs.
So where does the country go from
here? How does the Philippine polity
go cold turkey, bear the withdrawal
symptoms from weaning itself from a
dependence on pork barrel? Money,
legitimately or illegitimately
appropriated and disbursed, had
been used in times past to grease
the wheels of legislation and
execution.
This is what Congress crowed about
in the wake of Belgica, to take away
the proverbial prop upon which their
Houses stand. But the very picture of
political horse-trading did not
envision the exchange of money,
especially the peoples money, but
the aggregation and trading of
political, economic, and social
interests deliberated openly, for
which the money will then be
disbursed, and the reward is
continued political (and practical)
relevance to their constituencies (as
well as their respective salaries).
Idealistic, we know even America
struggles with corrupt money politics
and pork, though manifested in
different forms (e.g., earmarks).
Yet it is high time we learned the
habits of modern, accountable

politics.
Consider Araullo and Belgica a
badly-needed intervention, a
judicially-mandated stint in rehab that
may finally give Philippine politics a
chance to detoxify, shed some bad
money habits, and come clean into
the 21st century.
As with any intervention, it would
help for the intervenors to approach
their addict-subject with detachment
and compassion; with sensitivity as
well as resolve. Rappler.com
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Facebook and on Twitter
via @tonylavs. Christian Laluna is a
first year law student at the Ateneo
Law School. He works as a part-time
writer and communications specialist
at the Ateneo School of Government.
Araullo vs. Aquino III,
G.R. No. 209287,
February 3, 2015
POLITICAL LAW; POWER OF THE SUPREME
COURT; JUDICIAL REVIEW. We have already
said that the Legislature under our form of
government is assigned the task and the power to
make and enact laws, but not to interpret them.
This is more true with regard to the interpretation
of the basic law, the Constitution, which is not
within the sphere of the Legislative department.
If the Legislature may declare what a law means,
or what a specific portion of the Constitution
means, especially after the courts have in actual
case ascertain its meaning by interpretation and
applied it in a decision, this would surely cause
confusion and instability in judicial processes and
court decisions. Under such a system, a final
court determination of a case based on a judicial
interpretation of the law of the Constitution may
be undermined or even annulled by a subsequent
and different interpretation of the law or of the
Constitution by the Legislative department. That
would be neither wise nor desirable, besides
being clearly violative of the fundamental,
principles of our constitutional system of
government, particularly those governing the
separation of powers.
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW; STRICT
CONSTRUCTION ON THE ACCUMULATION
AND UTILIZATION OF SAVINGS. The decision
of the Court has underscored that the exercise of
the power to augment shall be strictly construed
by virtue of its being an exception to the general
rule that the funding of PAPs shall be limited to
the amount fixed by Congress for the purpose.
Necessarily, savings, their utilization and their
management will also be strictly construed
against expanding the scope of the power to
augment. Such a strict interpretation is essential
in order to keep the Executive and other budget
implementors within the limits of their
prerogatives during budget execution, and to
prevent them from unduly transgressing
Congress power of the purse. Hence, regardless
of the perceived beneficial purposes of the DAP,
and regardless of whether the DAP is viewed as
an effective tool of stimulating the national
economy, the acts and practices under the DAP
and the relevant provisions of NBC No. 541 cited
in the Decision should remain illegal and
unconstitutional as long as the funds used to
finance the projects mentioned therein are
sourced from savings that deviated from the
relevant provisions of the GAA, as well as the
limitation on the power to augment under Section
25(5), Article VI of the Constitution. In a society
governed by laws, even the best intentions must
come within the parameters defined and set by
the Constitution and the law. Laudable purposes
must be carried out through legal methods.
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW; POWER TO
AUGMENT; CANNOT BE USED TO FUND
NON-EXISTENT PROVISION IN THE GAA.
Further, in Nazareth v. Villar, we clarified that
there must be an existing item, project or activity,
purpose or object of expenditure with an
appropriation to which savings may be
transferred for the purpose of augmentation.
Accordingly, so long as there is an item in the
GAA for which Congress had set aside a specified
amount of public fund, savings may be
transferred thereto for augmentation purposes.
This interpretation is consistent not only with the
Constitution and the GAAs, but also with the
degree of flexibility allowed to the Executive
during budget execution in responding to
unforeseeable contingencies.