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

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion 9 G.R. No. E-08557 When barangay voters cast their ballots, they enter a covénant.*? They exercise their right of suffrage with definite legal consequences. Unlike a contract, which ordinarily arises from private agreement between parties, an election is a public act through which the sovereign people confer authority upon their chosen. representatives. Through this act, the electorate entrusts the exercise of governmental authority to particular officials for a period prescribed by law. In turn, the candidate elected assume office pursuant to the same legal framework. Those terms are supplied by law on election day, including the period of an official’s term of office. The duration of the term’ is‘ therefore ‘significant, as it defines the petiod ‘Within which the electorate expects its chosen representatives to exercise public authority before they are afforded another opportunity to elect the next set of officials. In Macalintal v- Commission on Elections; the Court called the exercise of the right to vote “the act of the people freely and consciously consenting to surrender a portion of their sacred rights and liberties to those who will temporarily exercise the powers that inviolably belong to them.” The temporary character of this authority bears emphasis. The same decision adopted Justice Isagani A. Cruz’s description of a republican government, wherein public functionaries serve “for a limited period only, after which they are replaced or retained, at the option of their principal.”3* i i : to. ‘ 1 The prerogative to replace or retain elected officials thus ultimately belongs to the principai—the electorate. 1. respectfully submit that a legislative measure extending an incumbent’s tenure takes that option from the sovereign people without asking them at all. ‘ The distinction between term and tenure leads to the same conclusion. The term of an office is “the time during which the officer may claim ws to hold the office as of right[.]’?° For an elective officer, the right has one 3! The word is used in the sense the social contract tradition gives it: the compact by which a people constitutes authority over itself. Nothing in this opinion depends on the private-law incidents of contract. 32 943 Phil. 212 (2023) [Per J. Kho, Jr., Ex Banc]. 33° Id. at 237. 34 Id. at 225, citing J. Puno, Concurring Opinion in Frivaldo v. COMELEC, 327 Phil. 521 (1996) [Per J. Panganiban, En Banc}, citing further ISAGANi CRUZ, PHILIPPINE POLITICAL Law. 49 (1991 ed.). 35 Tepacio Nueno v. Angeles, 76 Phil. 12, 21 (1946) [Per J. Feria, En Banc], as cited in Kida v, Senate, 675 Phil. 316 (2011) [Per J. Brion, En Banc]. The full passage in Kida reads: “[T]he ‘term’ means the time during which the officer may claim to hold the office as of right and fixes the interval after which the several incumbents shall succeed one another, while the ‘tenure’ represents the.term during which the incumbent actually holds the office[.]” (Citation omitted)