Digest: Salih v. Commission on Elections (279 SCRA 19, 1997)
Facts: Upon petition filed by the Nacionalista Party on November 16, 1965, which was opposed by Salih Ututalum, as duly registered candidate for Member of the House of Representatives for the lone congressional district for the Province of Sulu, in the national elections, the Commission on Elections a resolution ordering that elections shall be held for several precincts.
This is Ututalum’s alleged plurality over his closest opponent in said election, Indanan Anni, the official candidate of the Nacionalista Party, which instituted said proceedings in the Commission. Anni claims, however, that Ututalum’s plurality over him is 246 votes only.
Ututalum commenced the present action against the Commission and Indanan Anni, to annul the resolution. The resolution complained of is predicated upon the powers of the Commission under Section 2 of Article X of the Constitution, pursuant to which the Commission "shall have exclusive charge of the enforcement and administration of all laws relative to the conduct of elections." Respondents particularly stress the penultimate sentence of said section, to the effect that "all law enforcement agencies and instrumentalities of the Government shall, when so required by the Commission, act as its deputies for the purpose of insuring free, orderly and honest elections." They maintain that this provision suffices to uphold the validity of the resolution in question.
Issue: Whether or not the Resolution is valid
Ruling:
This pretense is untenable. The functions of the Commission under the
Constitution are essentially executive ("enforcement") and
administrative ("administration") in nature. Indeed, prior to the
creation of the Commission, as a constitutional body, its functions were being
discharged by the Executive Bureau, an office under the control of the then
Department of the Interior, both of which had been created by statute, and were
in turn under the control first of the Governor-General and later, under the
Constitution, of the President of the Philippines. Our fundamental law has
placed the agency charged with the enforcement and administration of all laws
relative to the conduct of elections beyond the control of the Executive and
beyond the power of Congress to abolish it (the agency), in addition to
adopting other measures tending to give thereto a reasonable degree of
independence. This notwithstanding, the nature of its powers has remained
essentially the same namely, executive in character.
In
short, the authority to pass the resolution complained of cannot be implied
from the statement in the Constitution to the effect that the Commission shall
seek to insure the holding of "free, orderly and honest elections",
for these objectives merely qualify the power of the Commission to enforce and
administer all laws relative to the conduct of elections. Said resolution
cannot be valid, therefore, unless the Revised Election Code or some other act
of Congress vests in the Commission the authority to order the holding of
elections in the aforementioned precincts on December 7, 1965.
Indeed,
under this section, the power to "postpone" an election is vested
exclusively in the President, although "upon recommendation" of the
Commission.
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