Con-ass by joint Congress is OK

FORMER Chief Justice Reynato Puno and incumbent San Beda College of Law Dean Fr. Ranhillo Aquino seem united in their opinion that there was something collectively wrong among the men and women who drafted the 1987 Constitution so that they failed to adjust the Charter’s provisions on how to amend it through a constituent assembly.

In their public pronouncements, Puno and Aquino are trying to explain that when the 1986 Constitutional Commission finally adopted a bicameral form of legislature, junking in the process a unicameral body which was the original proposal, its members forgot to change the language of the article pertaining to the manner by which Congress can amend the Constitution.

Consequently, the two are claiming, in introducing amendments to the economic provision of the Constitution at present by way of a constituent assembly, it should be done through a separate voting by the two houses of Congress, with each being required to obtain a ¾ vote of their respective members.

With due respect, I am constrained to disagree. My humble view is that amending the 1987 Constitution through a constituent assembly would require a joint voting (not separate, as Puno and Aquino are saying) of senators and congressmen convened as one single body.

My first legal basis for this kind of a view could be found under the statutory construction principle of law which says that “where the law does not distinguish, we must not distinguish.”

Since the Constitution itself is saying that voting should be done by Congress without any qualification or clarification as to whether “Congress” meant one body or its two houses, the legal presumption is going to be that what is required is a voting by Congress as one body alone.

Secondly, it is well-entrenched in this jurisdiction that public officials who have been tasked with a particular kind of work is presumed to have carried out that task regularly and in accordance with law. This is called the “presumption of regularity of the performance of official functions.”

That being the law here, we are all mandated to presume that when the 1986  Constitutional Commission members approved the draft of the 1987 Constitution which carried the provision saying that Congress has the power to vote on amendments to the Charter by way of a constituent assembly, they did it knowingly, with full appreciation that voting was to be done by Congress as a body.

And since the Commission did not chose to say, in the final draft of the 1987 Constitution, that voting on amendments by way of a constituent assembly was to be made by the two houses of Congress separately, it would be in keeping with the law to assume that no such separate voting of the two houses was intended.

Otherwise, we would be compelled to presume that the honorable men and women who devoted their time to drafting a constitution that sought to wean the country away from the recently ousted government of President Marcos, were all incompetents and unworthy of the work given to them by then President Corazon Aquino.