NEA Cannot use the PNP to perform its rulemaking powers, only it’s adjudicating power
Pre-Semester Non-classroom Lecture 36
The National Electrification Administration (NEA) is skating on really very thin ice, if it insists on its handpicked general manager for BENECO. Can NEA use the PNP or the NBI to install its Anointed One over at South Drive by force? The answer is yes, but only in an illegitimate way. Like any administrative body, NEA’s powers are divided into two: quasi-legislative (“rulemaking”) powers and quasi-judicial (“adjudicating”) powers. When it renders a decision in the exercise of its adjudicating powers, it can deputize law enforcement to execute that decision. NEA doesn’t have its own sheriffs. Any party to the dispute in which NEA rendered that decision must appeal straight to the Court of Appeals.
On the other hand, if NEA issues an order in the exercise of its rulemaking powers, it cannot call on the PNP to “execute” it. Administrative orders are not executable. You only execute judgments and decisions. How do you exact compliance to administrative orders then? You include penalty provisions in the rule, that’s how. Then you levy those penalties on the violator. If you are affected by the rule and want to assail the rule (you don’t really “appeal” a rule), you don’t file a petition for certiorari in the Court of Appeals. What you file is a Petition for Declaratory Relief. Yes, certainly, you can file it in the Court of Appeals, they will accept it if they are minded to because it has concurrent jurisdiction over extraordinary writs.
But a totally impartial and disinterested Court of Appeals will likely admonish you to respect the hierarchy of the courts and file your petition in the Regional Trial Court first. Why? Because original jurisdiction over a petition for declaratory relief lies with the RTC. And ALSO with the CA, like I said, by way of concurrent jurisdiction. But if we assume a “clean game” the CA (as the Supreme Court itself has done in countless cases) will insist that the petitioner respect the hierarchy of courts. Remember, I said ONLY if you want to assail an order of the NEA issued in the exercise of its RULEMAKING POWER—not its adjudicating power.
What was the nature of that “appointment resolution” that NEA served on BENECO anyway? It was an endorsement that was embellished with the trappings of an order to make it seem like the kind of order that can only be appealed in the CA. But it was not a Judgment or a Decision rendered in the exercise of its quasi-judicial (or adjudicating) powers. How can you tell? By the fact that it was not the end result of an “A, complainant, versus B, respondent” kind of proceedings. All it was was (that’s not redundant, trust me) a non-binding resolution inflicted with some imagined form of legal ascendancy. Kind of like a doctor telling a patient “you can eat anything you like” followed by “here’s a list of the things I want you to like” then handing him a piece of paper on which he had scrawled only one word “broccoli.”
So, no, that “resolution” has no teeth and NEA knows this only too well. This is exactly their attitude towards that resolution by the House Committee on Energy, saying a mere resolution telling them to stand down is all bark but no bite. Well, that’s not exactly true. The House of Representatives wields the power of the purse. It can generously allocate to NEA the astronomical budget of ONE PESO in the General Appropriations Act.
I will give the lawyers of NEA due credit, or at least the benefit of all my doubt. They must know this. They must also know that legal contortionism will only get them so far and that eventually, when this thing reaches the Supreme Court, the true legal brainiacs of Padre Faura will ultimately sort out all the convoluted details. As we say in the practice, “sundan na lang natin yung tama bago tayo magkahiyaan” Let’s just do it the right way lest we get our due comeuppance.
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”