Kida vs.

Senate

The following laws were enacted by the Congress for the Autonomous Regions in Muslim Mindanao
(ARMM):

1. Republic Act (RA) No. 6734 is the organic act that established the ARMM and scheduled the
first regular elections for the ARMM regional officials.
2. RA No. 9054 amended the ARMM Charter and reset the regular elections for the ARMM
regional officials to the second Monday of September 2001.
3. RA No. 9140 further reset the first regular elections to November 26, 2001.
4. RA No. 9333 reset for the third time the ARMM regional elections to the 2 nd Monday of August
2005 and on the same date every 3 years thereafter. In accordance with the act, next ARMM
regional elections should have been held on August 8, 2011. COMELEC had begun
preparations for these elections and had accepted certificates of candidacies for the various
regional offices to be elected.
5. RA No. 10153 was enacted, resetting the next ARMM regular elections to May 2013 to coincide
with the regular national and local elections of the country. The law as well granted the
President the power to “appoint officers-in-charge (OICs) for the Office of the Regional
Governor, the Regional Vice-Governor, and the Members of the Regional Legislative
Assembly, who shall perform the functions pertaining to the said offices until the officials duly
elected in the May 2013 elections shall have qualified and assumed office”.

The petitioners assailing RA No. 9140, RA No. 9333 and RA No. 10153 assert that these laws
amend RA No. 9054 and thus, have to comply with the supermajority vote and plebiscite requirements
prescribed under Sections 1 and 3, Article XVII of RA No. 9094 in order to become effective.

The petitions assailing RA No. 10153 further maintain that it is unconstitutional for its failure to
comply with the three-reading requirement of Section 26(2), Article VI of the Constitution.

Issue: Did the legislative portray grave abuse of discretion in passing RA 10153?

No.

We find that Congress, in passing RA No. 10153, acted strictly within its constitutional mandate.
Given an array of choices, it acted within due constitutional bounds and with marked reasonableness in
light of the necessary adjustments that synchronization demands.

The House of Representatives and the Senate—in the exercise of their legislative discretion—gave
full recognition to the President’s certification and promptly enacted RA No. 10153. Under the
circumstances, nothing short of grave abuse of discretion on the part of the two houses of Congress can
justify our intrusion under our power of judicial review.

Section 26(2), Article VI of the Constitution provides that before bills passed by either the House or
the Senate can become laws, they must pass through three readings on separate days. The exception is
when the President certifies to the necessity of the bill’s immediate enactment.

The Court, in Tolentino v. Secretary of Finance,19 explained the effect of the President’s
certification of necessity in the following manner:

“The presidential certification dispensed with the requirement not only of printing but also that of
reading the bill on separate days. The phrase “except when the President certifies to the necessity of its
immediate enactment, etc.” in Art. VI, Section 26[2] qualifies the two stated conditions before a bill can
become a law: [i] the bill has passed three readings on separate days and [ii] it has been printed in its final
form and distributed three days before it is finally approved. That upon the certification of a bill by the
President, the requirement of three readings on separate days and of printing and distribution can be
dispensed with is supported by the weight of legislative practice. For example, the bill defining the certiorari
jurisdiction of this Court which, in consolidation with the Senate version, became Republic Act No. 5440,
was passed on second and third readings in the House of Representatives on the same day [May 14, 1968]
after the bill had been certified by the President as urgent.”

In the present case, the records show that the President wrote to the Speaker of the House of
Representatives to certify the necessity of the immediate enactment of a law synchronizing the ARMM
elections with the national and local elections. Following our Tolentino ruling, the President’s certification
exempted both the House and the Senate from having to comply with the three separate readings
requirement.

On the follow-up contention that no necessity existed for the immediate enactment of these bills
since there was no public calamity or emergency that had to be met, again we hark back to our ruling in
Tolentino:

“The sufficiency of the factual basis of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus or declaration
of martial law Art. VII, Section 18, or the existence of a national emergency justifying the delegation of
extraordinary powers to the President under Art. VI, Section 23(2) is subject to judicial review because
basic rights of individuals may be of hazard. But the factual basis of presidential certification of bills, which
involves doing away with procedural requirements designed to insure that bills are duly considered by
members of Congress, certainly should elicit a different standard of review.” [Emphasis supplied.]