Civil Liberties Union v. EA

CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION v. THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY (G)
G.R. No. 83896, February 22, 1991

FACTS:

• Petitioners maintain that this Executive Order which, in effect, allows members of the Cabinet, their undersecretaries and assistant secretaries to hold other government offices or positions in addition to their primary positions, albeit subject to the limitation therein imposed, runs counter to Sec 13, Art VII of the 1987 Constitution, which provides as follows:
• Sec. 13. The President, Vice-President, the Members of the Cabinet, and their deputies or assistants shall not, unless otherwise provided in this Constitution, hold any other office or employment during their tenure xxx.
• Petitioner Anti-Graft League of the Philippines objects to both DOJ Opinion No. 73 and Executive Order No. 284 as they allegedly "lumped together" Sec 13, Art VII and the general provision in another article, Sec 7(2), Art IX-B. This "strained linkage" between the two provisions, each addressed to a distinct and separate group of public officers allegedly "abolished the clearly separate, higher, exclusive, and mandatory constitutional rank assigned to the prohibition against multiple jobs for the President, the Vice-President, the members of the Cabinet, and their deputies and subalterns, who are the leaders of government expected to lead by example." Sec 7(2), Art IX-B provides:
• Sec. 7. xxx Unless otherwise allowed by law or by the primary functions of his position, no appointive official shall hold any other office or employment in the government or any subdivision, agency or instrumentality thereof, including government-owned or controlled corporations or their subsidiaries.

ISSUE:

• Whether or not Executive Order No. 284 is constitutional.

HELD:

• No, Executive Order No. 284 is unconstitutional.
• The intent of the framers of the Constitution was to impose a stricter prohibition on the President and his official family in so far as holding other offices or employment in the government or elsewhere is concerned.
• It is a well-established rule in Constitutional construction that no one provision of the Constitution is to be separated from all the others, to be considered alone, but that all the provisions bearing upon a particular subject are to be brought into view and to be so interpreted as to effectuate the great purposes of the instrument. Sections bearing on a particular subject should be considered and interpreted together as to effectuate the whole purpose of the Constitution and one section is not to be allowed to defeat another, if by any reasonable construction, the two can be made to stand together.
• The phrase "unless otherwise provided in this Constitution" must be given a literal interpretation to refer only to those particular instances cited in the Constitution itself