Understandably any request for emergency powers – I prefer to use extraordinary powers to highlight their exceptional nature - by any president evokes no small amount of trepidation because of the martial law experience during the time of the Marcos dictatorship. In fact tomorrow, September 21, we remember how on this same and month in 1972, 42 years ago, President Marcos issued Proclamation 1081 declaring the entire archipelago under martial law. Giving an imagined conspiracy of the left and the right as an excuse, he had thousands arrested – his political enemies like Ninoy Aquino and Jose W. Diokno, labor leaders, student activists, and other he saw as obstacles to his plans. Many others would be killed in the next 14 years of dictatorship, including some of the best and brightest young Filipinos like Ateneo de Manila martial law martyrs, recently featured in Interaskyon,com, such as Edgar Jopson, Emmanuel Lacaba, Abraham Sarmiento J.,, Ferdinand Arceo, Artemio Celestial Jr, Manuel Hizon Jr., and William Vincent Begg. For me, this was the most hurtful thing that the dictatorship did to our country – we were deprived of some of our future leaders. The Marcos experience is a constant reminder of an emergency regime run amok. As the framers of the new Constitution began the enormous task of drawing up a new fundamental document, “never again” rang every so often in everyone’s ears. As a result, the 1987 Constitution puts in numerous safeguards to check the exercise by the executive of his commander-in-chief powers. In this regard, Fr. Joaquin Bernas, pre-eminent constitutionalist and one of the commissioners who drafted the present Constitution observed: “The Commander-in-Chief provisions of the 1935 Constitution had enabled President Ferdinand Marcos to impose authoritarian rule on the Philippines from 1972 to 1986. Supreme Court decisions during that period upholding the actions taken by Mr. Marcos made authoritarian rule part of Philippine constitutional jurisprudence. The members of the Constitutional Commission, very much aware of these facts, went about reformulating the Commander-in-Chief powers with a view to dismantling what had been constructed during the authoritarian years. The new formula included revised grounds for the activation of emergency powers, the manner of activating them, the scope of the powers, and review of Presidential action.” The truth is that constitutions are primarily designed, not to achieve efficiency, but to create an intricate system of checks and balances among the branches of government. By and large, it reflects a great distrust on the part of government to exercise powers entrusted to it in a responsible manner, most notably the Executive branch. Nowhere is it truer than in the present 1987 Constitution, the pervading theme of which is to do away with all possibilities of strongman rule, no doubt a painful lesson of the Marcos dictatorship. The problem arises then when an emergency occurs and the government is inevitably hampered with the deliberate pace of constitutional rule. Certainly, the President cannot be expected to wait for congressional deliberation before he can declare a state of war when it is staring at him in the face. This is the dilemma many constitutional governments face. As a result, most constitutions incorporate provisions and unique power arrangements to deal with emergencies. These extraordinary powers however, can be considered, at best, a necessary evil. It should never be considered normal, must never be lightly granted by Congress, and if the right case or controversy comes, the Supreme Court has to scrutinize this.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 00:55:17 +0000