Bayanihan Law legal – high court

THE Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday declared as constitutional the Bayanihan to Heal As One Act and the presidential issuances to respond to the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.

The tribunal’s Public Information Office chief, Brian Keith Hosaka, said the high court junked the petition of a former law dean that assailed the legality of Republic Act (RA) 11469, the Bayanihan Law.

RA 11469 authorized President Rodrigo Duterte to realign unused public funds to address the Covidpandemic.

The court ruled that the petition for certiorari and prohibition filed by Jaime Ibañez, former law dean of the Laguna State Polytechnic University, must be dismissed for lack of merit.

Ibañez had asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Bayanihan Law because it is partly unconstitutional.

Voting 11-2, the justices upheld the legality and constitutionality of the Bayanihan Law.

Associate Justice Alexander Gesmundo, the ponente of the ruling, found no grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part

of the executive department.

Associate Justices Mario Victor Leonen and Samuel Gaerlan dissented in the majority ruling.

Ibañez raised constitutional issues against the Bayanihan Law because it is “not compliant with the letters of the law.”

He argued that there was grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction when the executive department “passed” the Bayanihan Law.

Named respondents to the case was Cabinet Secretary Karla Alexei Nograles, Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID).

Ibañez argued that the imposition of the enhanced community quarantine violated the people’s liberty guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

He stressed that the IATF-EID went beyond its powers since “legislative power to make laws is vested in Congress. The President is merely tasked to execute the law.”

He asked the high court to declare as void Executive Order 112 imposing the enhanced community quarantine and the IATF Resolution 37 that placed Metro Manila under modified enhanced community quarantine.

“The power to make laws cannot be delegated. The IATF has no power to define the law on quarantine, set its own parameters and restrictions and to even invent the modified enhanced community [quarantine] according to its own bizarre definition, which all amount to an exercise of grave abuse of discretion or in excess of its jurisdiction,” Ibañez said.