LAGMAN: GOCC GOVERNANCE
ACT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
Minority Leader and Albay Representative Edcel C. Lagman has challenged yet another pet measure of the Aquino administration when he filed on Thursday a petition asking the Supreme Court to invalidate as unconstitutional R.A. No. 10149 or the “GOCC Governance Act of 2011”.
While admitting that scandalously huge salaries, allowances and perks of some Government Owned and Controlled Corporations (GOCCs) should not be tolerated and must be rectified, Lagman said that “a wrong cannot be righted by another wrong.”
Lagman asserted that the assailed law is a “compendium of sweeping, wayward, illegal and unconstitutional solutions to a problem which is grave but not widespread.” It is “indiscriminate wrath against the entire GOCC sector”, he added.
The Bicol solon told the Supreme Court in his petition for certiorari and prohibition that the infirm statute is “a shortcut and an ill-conceived remedy which punishes both the guilty and the innocent without due process, violates the security of tenure of civil servants, provides for undue delegation and utter abdication of legislative powers; and supplants the jurisdiction of the constitutionally created Civil Service Commission.”
The petition also asked that respondent Executive Secretary Pacquito N. Ochoa, Jr. be enjoined from enforcing the controverted law and respondent Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad restrained from releasing funds to support the implementation of the law.
Lagman cited the following constitutional infirmities afflicting the challenged statute:
1. R.A. No. 10149 violates the constitutionally guaranteed security of tenure of officials, trustees and directors of GOCCs with original charters or those created under special law when it pre-terminated the terms of office of incumbents as of June 30, 2011 without due process.
2. The grant of principal functions and powers to the “Governance Commission for Government-Owned or Controlled Corporations” (GCG) constitutes undue delegation of legislative powers like amending or modifying GOCCs’ original charters enacted by the Congress as well as recommending their abolition or privatization with the sole approval of the President and without the requisite legislation.
3. The grant of awesome powers to the GCG constitutes an abdication of legislative authority which is violative of the constitution.
4. The creation of the GCG duplicates and supplants the constitutional authority and jurisdiction of the Civil Service Commission.
Lagman also said that the enactment of the challenged statute was fast-tracked in order to create vacancies in the helm and governing boards of GOCCs to accommodate partisans of the Aquino administration who are seeking government jobs after the employment ban on election losers had elapsed last May.
Lawyers Johween O. Atienza and Tristan Frederick L. Tresvalles assisted Lagman in filing the petition which was docketed as G.R. No. 197422.