TOLENTINO VS.

COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS
G.R. No. L-34150. October 16, 1971

Barredo, J.

21 SCRA 774 – Political Law – Amendment to the Constitution – Political Question vs Justiciable
Question

FACTS:

The Constitutional Convention of 1971 approved on 28 September 1971 Organic Resolution No 1,

amending Section 1 Article V of the Constitution so as to lower the voting age to 18 and that the
plebiscite for partial amendment to take place with the local elections on November 1971. President
Diosdado Macapagal called upon the COMELEC to help the Convention implement the said resolution.
On 30 September 1971 COMELEC resolved to inform the Convention that it will hold the plebiscite.
Succeeding resolutions on campaigning and confirming the authority of the President of the Convention
to implement the Organic Resolution were approved. Petitioner, Arturo Tolentino contended that under
Section 1 Article XV of the Constitution, the proposed amendment in question cannot be presented to the
people for ratification separately from each and all of the other amendments to be drafted and proposed
by the Convention.

ISSUE:

Whether or not the Convention may call for a plebiscite on the sole amendment contained in Organic
Resolution 1 pursuant to Section 1 Article XV of the Constitution.

HELD:

Petition is granted. Organic Resolution No. 1 and the implementing acts and resolutions of the
Convention, insofar as they provide for the holding of a plebiscite on 08 November 1971, as well as the
resolution of the respondent COMELEC complying therewith are declared null and void.

The condition and limitation that all the amendments to be proposed by the same Convention must be
submitted to the people in a single plebiscite pursuant to Section 1 Article XV of the Constitution. The part
that the people play in its amendment becomes harder, when a whole constitution is submitted to them,
more or less they can assumed its harmony as an integrated whole, and they can either accept or reject
it in its entirety. When an amendment is submitted to them that is to form part of the existing constitution,
in like fashion they can study with deliberation the proposed amendment in relation to the whole existing
constitution and or any of its parts.