E-08557 Concurring and Dissenting Opinion: Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen — Official PDF

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion 13 G.R. No. E-08557 The two mandates differ in another respect. The barangay electorate of October 2023 decided a particular question: who would hold these offices, in this barangay, for the period then fixed by law. isi : No voter who elected the present members of Congress was asked whether barangay officials elected in 2023 should remain in office until November 2028.. That question did not appear on any ballot. A general mandate to legislate does not carry a power to undo a direct and specific act of the principal on the very matter the principal decided. The law of agency expresses a related idea in its own setting, where an agent must act within the scope of the authority conferred. Public law is not private agency, and the analogy should not be pressed further than its point. The point is that when the principal has acted directly and specifically, the agent’s general authority does not include undoing that act. aon The members of Congress themselves show the limit. The Constitution fixes their terms at six years for Senators and three years for Members of the House of Representatives.*? No statute could add aday to them; for “terms fixed by the Constitution cannot be changed by mere statute. >t The constitutional text is one reason. The deeper reason is that each member’s term is part of what the voters conferred in electing that member, and an agent may not enlarge its own commission. The barangay official’s term differs in a single respect: its length is fixed in advance by statute rather than by the Constitution. Its source is the same. The barangay official, like the Senator, holds office as of right because the people chose that official for a stated period. It would be strange if an agent that cannot extend its own commission by a single day could extend others’ commissions by two years. The Constitution also shows where the power to extend the terms of sitting officials lies. In 1987, the terms of the incumbent President and Vice- President were extended to noon of June 30, 1992 “for purposes of © synchronization of elections.”*° Thesovereign people themselves made the extension when they ratified the Constitution. Our Constitution did not adopt Rousseau’s view. It chose representation and vests plenary legislative © power in Congress. The argument in the text requires only the narrower proposition that representation is bounded by the commission that creates it. 4° CONST, art. VI, secs. 4 and 7. “Kida v. Senate, 675 Phil. 316, 373 (2011) [Per J. Brion, En Banc]. 4 CONS'., art. XVII, sec. 5: “The six-year term of the incumbent President and Vice-President elected in the February 7, 1986 election is, for purposes of synchronization of elections, hereby extended to noon of June 30, 1992.” The Constitution was ratified in the plebiscite of February 2, 1987.