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

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion 14 'G.R: No. E-08557 In Kida v: Sentate,*° this Court observed that the Constitution shortened the terms of twelve Senators and extended the terms of the President and the Vice-President in order to synchronize elections, and that “Congress was not granted this same power.”“7 The same act, carrying sitting elective officials beyond the period for which they were elected, was valid when the people did it directly and was withheld from their agent. Sustaining Republic Act No. 12326 erases that distinction. The text of the Constitution further gestures towards this interpretation. No increase in the salaries of Senators and Members of the House-may ° take effect “until after the expiration of the full term of all the Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives approving such increase.”“* No increase in the salary of the President may take effect “until after the expiration. of the term. of the incumbent during which such. increase was approved.“ Both provisions rest on one principle: an advantage attached to an elective office by a law approved. during an incumbency belongs to the successors, and not to those in office when the law was passed. The provisions speak of salary; they do not govern barangay officials. However, the principle they express can nonetheless be legitimately derived from the text and applied here, because it concerns the integrity of elective office, and of all the incidents of an elective office, time in it is the most valuable. If the Constitution will not let an incumbent enjoy a higher salary approved during the incumbency, it is difficult to read it as allowing two more years in office to be conferred on incumbents by statute. VI The cost of the extension falls on our people. It falls first on the voters of every barangay, who last chose their officials in October 2023 and, under Republic Act No. 12326, will not choose again until November 2028.*° It falls on the citizens who prepared to run for barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan office in elections scheduled for’ November 2, 2026, whose certificates of candidacy were to be filed from September 28 to October 5, 2026, only days after the law was signed.>! 48 CONST., art. VI, sec. 10. 4 — CONST., art. VII, sec. 6. 50 Republic Act No. 12326, sec. 2. The second Monday of November 2028 falls on November 13, 2028. Some reports describe the date as the first Monday of November 2028. See Commission on Elections Resolution No. 11191 which provides for the calendar of activities for the conduct of the November 2, 2026 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections. 4 675 Phil. 316 (2011) [Per J. Brion, En Banc]. 7 Id.at373. st