04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly a Comprehensive Compact and will require amendments to the existing legal framework. This amendatory process, under the Constitution, requires that both Congress and the people in their sovereign capacity be heard. Thus, the petitioners could still fully ventilate their views and be heard even if the MOA-AD had been signed. It is in the above sense that I doubt if the ponencia's cited case - Chavez v. PEA[40]can serve as an effective authority for the ponencia's thesis: that the process of negotiations as well as the terms of the MOA-AD should have been fully disclosed pursuant to the people's right to information under Section 7, Article III and the government's duty to disclose under Section 28, Article II of the Constitution. The Chavez case dealt with a commercial contract that was perfected upon its signing; disclosure of information pertaining to the negotiations was therefore necessary as an objection after the signing would have been too late. As outlined above, this feature of a commercial contract does not obtain in the MOA-AD because subsequent acts have to take place before the points it covers can take effect. But more than this, the contract involved in Chavez and the purely commercial and proprietary interests it represents cannot simply be compared with the MOA-AD and the concerns it touched upon - recognition of a new juridical entity heretofore unknown in Philippine law, its impact on national sovereignty, and its effects on national territory and resources. If only for these reasons, I have to reject the ponencia's conclusions touching on the right to information and consultations. My more basic disagreement with the ponencia's treatment of the right to information and the duty of disclosure is its seeming readiness to treat these rights as stand-alone rights that are fully executory subject only to the safeguards that Congress may by law interpose. In the first place, it was not clear at all from the ponencia's cited constitutional deliberations that the framers intended the duty of disclosure to be immediately executory. The cited deliberation recites: MR. DAVIDE: I would to get some clarifications on this. Mr. Presiding Officer, did I get the Gentleman correctly as having said that this is not a self-executory provision? It would require a legislation by Congress to implement? MR. OPLE: Yes. Originally, it was going to be self-executing, but I accepted an amendment from Commissioner Regalado, so that the safeguards on national interests are modified by the clause "as may be provided by law." MR. DAVIDE: But as worded, does it not mean that this will immediately take effect and Congress may provide for reasonable safeguards on the sole ground of national interest? MR. OPLE: Yes. I think so, Mr. Presiding Officer, I said earlier that it should immediately influence the climate of the conduct of public affairs but, of course, Congress here may no longer pass a law revoking it, or if this is approved, revoking this principle, which is inconsistent with this policy. [41] elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 131/203