MIF, other high-profile cases clog SC docket
Pity the Supreme Court justices. Their clogged dockets are being crowded further by numerous new “transcendental” cases. Most, if not all, involve constitutionality issues that are elevated to the banc and invariably need time-consuming oral arguments. Several refer to “gravely abusive” acts of the Commission on Elections. Many others involve the constitutionality or validity of the actions (or inactions) of the House of Representatives and/or the Senate on, among others, the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte, the General Appropriations Act (GAA) or national budget, and the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (which I took up last Monday). Today, let me take up the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) case filed by Sen. Koko Pimentel and Bayan Muna. I will not risk contempt of court by commenting on the merits of the case. I will write only to enable the public to understand the vital issues at stake.
TO BEGIN WITH, SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS (SWFs) like the MIF are not uncommon. They are established and owned by a country (or an autonomous political subdivision thereof) to invest and manage government savings. Many of them are gigantic, even humongous. The largest in the world, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, posted a full-year 2024 profit of $222.4 billion (2.5 trillion kroner) computed at a 13-percent return on investment. It was set up in the 1990s to invest excess revenues from that country’s oil and gas industry. The fund has investments in more than 8,000 companies in 63 countries.
Nearer home in Southeast Asia, the largest is the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. (GIC). In fact, Singapore has two SWFs, the other being Temasek Holdings. The newest in our region is Indonesia’s Danantara, which was launched only last Feb. 24 by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
According to Prabowo, Danantara will operate like Singapore’s Temasek, independently from the existing Indonesia Investment Authority. Danantara plans to invest about $20 billion in a wide range of science and technology projects including artificial intelligence.
THE PETITIONERS IN THE PRESENT CASE CONTEND that the law, Republic Act No. 11954, creating the MIF is void because its enactment violated Section 26 (2) of Article VI and Sections 16 and 20 of Article XII of our Constitution. The petitioners posited several arguments, but I believe the most essential is the alleged violation by Congress of Section 26 (2).
This section provides that before a bill can be enacted into law, it must pass “three readings on separate days, and printed copies thereof in its final form have been distributed to its members three days before its passage, except when the President certifies to the necessity of its immediate enactment to meet a public calamity or emergency. Upon the last reading of a bill, no amendment thereto shall be allowed, and the vote thereon shall be taken immediately thereafter, and the yeas and nays entered in the Journal.”
Essentially, the government through the Office of the Solicitor General led by the esteemed Menardo I. Guevarra counters that the petitioners are trying to overturn the “Enrolled Bill Doctrine” that has been the prevailing jurisprudence for decades.
Anchored on the principle of separation of powers, the doctrine states that the bill certified by the Senate president, the Senate secretary, the speaker of the House, and the secretary of the House and eventually signed or made to lapse into law by the President shall conclusively bind the judiciary, despite claims or extrinsic evidence to the contrary reported by media or by interviews or by speeches of individual members of Congress.
IN FACT, THE ENROLLED BILL DOCTRINE IS ALSO THE GOVERNMENT’S MAIN DEFENSE in the other “transcendental” cases involving the enactment of the GAA and other laws. While there have been some modifications of the doctrine, its main component—the judiciary’s respect for the internal processes of Congress—remains with the same rationale barring congressional or executive inquiry into the internal proceedings of how the Supreme Court promulgates its decisions.
The signatures of the justices on the copy in the files of the Office of the Clerk of Court are deemed the true and authentic decision, notwithstanding any personal declarations of the justices, whether incumbent or retired, including mine, to the contrary.
But nothing is really written in stone in law and jurisprudence. It is said that the law must be stable, but it cannot stand still. How many times has the Court reversed or modified its earlier decisions—like for instance (1) in allowing—several years after I retired—all parties and groups, including dynasts and political, to invade the party-list system, thereby revising an earlier decision I wrote reserving it only to the marginalized and underrepresented; and (2) in making mandatory the 20-percent share of the party-list in the House of Representatives contrary to another earlier decision I penned, saying the constitutional provision was only directory? Will the present Court revise or modify the enrolled bill doctrine? The oral argument on April 22 may give us a hint. Abangan.
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