04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly Any legally binding commitment to amend the Constitution can only come from the political institutions and the sovereign people who are empowered by the charter to amend the Constitution. The President nor any other member or office of the executive branch does not have the power to effect changes to the Constitution even if he wanted to in the paramount interest of the country and of the people. Any commitment to any entity on the part of the President or his political appointees to amend the Constitution is inherently ultra vires, because the Executive Branch does not have the innate power to effectuate such changes on its own. Neither does the President have the power to bind to positive action those whom the Constitution entrusts the power to amend the charter, namely; the Congress, the delegates to a constitutional convention, and the electorate. Constitutional order cannot be sacrificed for expediency, even if in the name of peace in Mindanao. Assuming that the executive branch has in good faith become intractably convinced that it is necessary to amend the Constitution in order to obtain lasting peace in Mindanao, the consequent step should not be to make promises it has no power alone to keep, hoping against hope that the Congress and the voters would ultimately redeem the promises. Since constitutional amendments are involved, the ability of the executive branch to undertake any legally binding commitment to amend the Constitution can only be recognized, if at all, with the prior appropriate authorization of Congress, acting with the specified majorities provided in Section 1(1), Article XVII of the Constitution.[40] Under such a mechanism, any constitutionally-oriented concessions offered by the Philippine government would contemporaneously bear the preliminary seal of approval by the people or institutions authorized to propose amendments to the Constitution, subject to final ratification by the people through a plebiscite. The Government would have been spared of the embarrassment and outcry had it acted with more prudence by first securing the necessary political mandate to undertake charter change for the benefit of Mindanao, instead of acting brashly and rashly by acceding at the outset to the undertaking without consulting the Congress or the people. In the end, the issuance of the TRO by this Court proved highly providential, as even the Government wound up seeing the proverbial light before it was too late. With the foregoing qualifications, I vote to dismiss the petitions and register my dissent from the result reached by the majority. [1] I. CRUZ. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (2007 ed.), at 23. See ALSO R. MARTIN, PHILIPPINE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (1954 ed.), at 56-57. [2] V. MENDOZA, JUDICIAL REVIEW OF CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION: CASES AND MATERIALS (2004 ed.), at 107. [3] 337 Phil. 654, 658 (1997). [4] G.R. No. 178830, 14 July 2008. Available http://www.supremecourt.gov.ph/jurisprudence /2008/july2008/178830.htm. elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/47263 at 151/203