Administrative Law
Raul Lambino and Erico Aumentado, Together with 6,327,952 Registered Voters v.
COMELEC
G.R. No. 174153
October 25, 2006
FACTS:
The Lambino Group's initiative petition proposes changes that will shift the present
Bicameral-Presidential system to a Unicameral-Parliamentary form of government.
The COMELEC denied due course to the Lambino Group's petition.
ISSUE:
Whether the proposed amendments are actually revisions, in that they actually seek to
eliminate the separation of powers
RULING:
Our present governmental system is built on the separation of powers among the three
branches of government. The legislature is generally limited to the enactment of laws, the
executive to the enforcement of laws and the judiciary to the application of laws. This
separation is intended to prevent a concentration of authority in one person or group that
might lead to an irreversible error or abuse in its exercise to the detriment of our republican
institutions. In the words of Justice Laurel, the doctrine of separation of powers is intended to
secure action, to forestall overaction, to prevent despotism and obtain efficiency.
In the proposed parliamentary system, there is an obvious lack of formal institutional
checks on the legislative and executive powers of the state, since both the Prime Minister and
the members of his cabinet are drawn from parliament. There are no effective limits to what
the Prime Minister and parliament can do, except the will of the parliamentary majority. This
goes against the central principle of our present constitutional scheme that distributes the
powers of government and provides for counteraction among the three branches.
Consequently, the shift from presidential to parliamentary form of government cannot
be regarded as anything but a drastic change. It will require a total overhaul of our
governmental structure and involve a re-orientation in the cardinal doctrines that govern our
constitutional set-up.