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Home Constitutional Law Social Justice Society vs Dangerous Drugs Board and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency
Social Justice Society vs Dangerous Drugs Board and Philippine
Drug Enforcement Agency
Political Law Qualifications of a Senator or a Congress Representative
NOTE: This is consolidated with Laserna vs DDB and PDEA ( G.R. No. 158633 ) and Pimentel vs COMELEC ( G.R. No. 161658 )
In 2002, RA 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 was implemented. Sec 36 thereof requires mandatory drug testing of candidates for public
office, students of secondary and tertiary schools, officers and employees of public and private offices, and persons charged before the prosecutors office with
certain offenses. On 23 Dec 2003, COMELEC issued Resolution No. 6486, prescribing the rules and regulations on the mandatory drug testing of candidates for
public office in connection with the May 10, 2004 synchronized national and local elections. Pimentel, Jr., a senator and a candidate for re-election in the May
elections, filed a Petition for Certiorari and Prohibition under Rule 65. In it, he seeks (1) to nullify Sec. 36(g) of RA 9165 and COMELEC Resolution No. 6486
dated December 23, 2003 for being unconstitutional in that they impose a qualification for candidates for senators in addition to those already provided for in the
1987 Constitution; and (2) to enjoin the COMELEC from implementing Resolution No. 6486. According to Pimentel, the Constitution only prescribes a maximum
of five (5) qualifications for one to be a candidate for, elected to, and be a member of the Senate. He says that both the Congress and COMELEC, by requiring, via
RA 9165 and Resolution No. 6486, a senatorial aspirant, among other candidates, to undergo a mandatory drug test, create an additional qualification that all
candidates for senator must first be certified as drug free. He adds that there is no provision in the Constitution authorizing the Congress or COMELEC to expand
the qualification requirements of candidates for senator.
ISSUE: Whether or not Sec 36 of RA 9165 is an amendment to the Constitution on the qualifications of Senators.
HELD: Pimentels contention is valid. Accordingly, Sec. 36 of RA 9165 is unconstitutional. It is basic that if a law or an administrative rule violates any norm of
the Constitution, that issuance is null and void and has no effect. The Constitution is the basic law to which all laws must conform; no act shall be valid if it
conflicts with the Constitution. In the discharge of their defined functions, the three departments of government have no choice but to yield obedience to the
commands of the Constitution. Whatever limits it imposes must be observed. The provision [n]o person elected to any public office shall enter upon the duties
of his office until he has undergone mandatory drug test. Is not tenable as it enlarges the qualifications. COMELEC cannot, in the guise of enforcing and
administering election laws or promulgating rules and regulations to implement Sec. 36, validly impose qualifications on candidates for senator in addition to what
the Constitution prescribes. If Congress cannot require a candidate for senator to meet such additional qualification, the COMELEC, to be sure, is also without such
power. The right of a citizen in the democratic process of election should not be defeated by unwarranted impositions of requirement not otherwise specified in the
Constitution.

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