Before the appropriations committee took up the matter of the Commission on Human Rights budget, Chito Gascon already feared the worst. From his Facebook posts it was clear that he was not oblivious to the foreboding of a blow that Congress would deal the commission he chairs. Still, he persisted in the belief that prudence and better judgment would prevail.
At least at this stage, good sense was dealt a severe beating. The appropriations committee, it has been reported, has decided to give the CHR zero budget. Unless all of its officials and employees are willing to work out of a sense of civic-spiritedness, expecting no salary or remuneration, and willing to spend for maintenance and other operating expenses from their own pockets, then this would mean that Congress is poised on rewriting the national government’s organization chart, erasing from it the Commission on Human Rights.
But really, for all its posturing, Congress cannot deny the CHR its budget. In the first place, unless the Constitution is amended in such wise as to eliminate the Commission, it is a body that enjoys constitutional status. True, it is not one of the so-called independent constitutional commissions—Commission on Audit, Commission on Elections and the Civil Service Commission—but the Constitution very clearly ordains the existence of the CHR. “There is hereby created an independent office called the Commission on Human Rights.” Section 18 of Article XIII also enumerates the powers and the duties of the Commission—none of which it is able to fulfill without a budget. No, denying the CHR a budget would be ultra vires on the part of Congress. It can reject any request for any increase in appropriation, but even if it is not minded to approve its budget, the Constitution provides a default setting: “The approved annual appropriations of the Commission shall be automatically and regularly released.” And if Congress should argue that there is nothing to release precisely because nothing has been approved, the argument can be made against Congress that the constitutional command that the CHR’s appropriation be “automatically and regularly released” binds Congress to grant it a budget sufficient for it to carry out its constitutionally assigned tasks.
It is true of course that Congress enjoys the “power of the purse,” but there are contents of that purse that have been constitutionally apportioned. The AFP has a constitutional mandate, no matter that this is couched in general terms. Should the members of Congress be sufficiently piqued by the Chief of Staff, they would still be unable to strip the AFP of its budget because the Legislature would, in effect, be making impossible compliance with the Constitution. The power of the purse is circumscribed by the Constitution, and where the fundamental law mandates that offices perform tasks, exercise powers and enjoy prerogatives, such amount as may be necessary to accomplish a constitutional assignment must be deemed obligatory on the part of Congress.
But really, what terrible wrong has the CHR done to merit this kind of reprimand from Congress, no matter that it may in fact be hardly anything more than symbolic? It is controversial because it has entertained complaints against EJKs and caused the investigation of police officers and other law enforcers in connection with the aggressive campaign against drugs. In respect to the government’s relentlessness about eradicating substance abuse, I am in complete agreement, which does not mean that I concur with the means used —about which I have very serious reservations. But I equally concur in the actions of the CHR, for so has the Constitution directed it to do.
Why, it is asked, does the CHR cry out in vehement protest and spring into inquisitorial mode when an officer of the law is a suspect, and not when a criminal element, like an addict or a pusher or a coddler is? While, philosophically, a human right is one that every person enjoys not because it is conferred by positive law but because it is a demand of practical reason that such a right be recognized in persons, for juridical and enforcement purposes, we have characterized as human rights violations those committed by agents of the State against citizens. Offenses perpetrated by criminal elements are treated as common crimes, and dealt with by the police as well as the prosecutorial service of the government. There is absolutely no reason to treat the cases involving police, AFP personnel and officers and other law enforcers who fall victim to crimes as any less heinous, reprehensible and condemnable than those crimes committed by law enforcers. But crimes committed by the latter are treated as human rights violations and dealt with accordingly by the CHR precisely because it is precisely the task of the Commission on be a citizens’ shield against the mail fist of State that has vast powers and means at its disposal! To include all offenses under the heading of “human rights violations” would be to transform the CHR into some national super police force—which it clearly was never meant to be nor can reasonably be.
The Congressional power of oversight does involve the power to make budgetary decisions on the basis of an agency’s performance or lack of it. But it cannot entail the power of Congress to thwart the Constitution!
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@outlook.com
