Press Release
December 7, 2009

MIRIAM: SENATE VOTE USELESS IN JOINT SESSION

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, a constitutional law expert, said that the Congress joint session on the martial law edict could render the Senate vote useless, because to revoke it would need at least a majority of all the Congress members, meaning 146 votes.

"The House of Representatives could block a revocation simply by being absent, or by casting no vote. Even if all 23 senators voted for revocation, there would still be no compliance with the charter," she said.

Santiago said Proclamation 1959 suffers from "doctrinal confusion," and she would vote to revoke it.

"It will hardly be worth the effort to attend the joint session, because the Senate will be atomized, but at least every senator could explain his or her side," she said.

The Constitution requires an actual state of rebellion, which is defined as an armed public uprising.

"But the TV public never saw any armed public uprising against the government. What it public saw was an act of terrorism," she said.

Santiago said that the only definition of rebellion in the Constitution should be taken from the Penal Code.

The senator said that the Penal Code defines the crime of rebellion as "rising publicly and taking arms against the government, for the purpose of removing from the allegiance to the government, any part of the territory, or of the armed forces, or the powers of the chief executive, and the Congress."

Santiago said that the martial law proclamation, on closer analysis, is based merely on imminent rebellion, which the charter purposely excluded as a ground for martial law.

"The President was ill-served by her legal advisers. I accuse her shadowy lawyers of engaging in creative constitutional construction. If the Constitution is clear, there is no room for interpretation. The entire 'Whereas' part of the proclamation is an exercise in creative constitutional interpretation," she said.

Santiago said that to suppress any state of imminent rebellion, it is enough for the President to exercise her powers as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and to call out the armed forces.

"The President already has enough powers to deal with imminent rebellion. Instead, her advisers invented preemptive martial law. The thinking behind the proclamation seems to be that the state could exercise preemptive martial law in anticipation of an imminent rebellion. That is creative, but unfortunately it has no relation to constitutional law. Perhaps the advisers were mistakenly making an analogy with the concept of preemptive self-defense under criminal law," she said.

Santiago said she pored over the Records of the Constitutional Commission, but found no basis for Proclamation 1959.

"The Concom records are profuse with the affirmations of the commissioners that there should be actual and not merely imminent rebellion," she said.

Santiago lamented that the Concom commissioners voted for the phrase "voting jointly," instead of the phrase "voting separately," as recommended by Commissioner Ambrosio Padilla.

Quoting from the Record, Santiago pointed out that Commissioner Rodrigo said that it would be insulting to the Senate to be drowned by the votes of the House. Mr. Rodrigo reportedly insisted that the two chambers - one composed of 250 members and the other composed of 24 members - must be made co-equal, by providing for separate voting.

When the Concom approved the phrase "voting jointly," it appears that Commissioner Monsod and Commissioner Sarmiento tried to mollify the former senators, by saying that the Senate could give advice to the House.

"I guess this sop means that at the joint session, each senator should be given the chance to explain his or her vote," Santiago said.

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