1987 Constitution SHACKLES President's MARTIAL law powers

"Paranoid over martial law" Fr Ranhilio Callangan Aquino; Published 10:28 AM, January 17, 2017; Updated 12:32 PM, January 27, 2017; Shackled commander-in-chief: Whenever my students and I reach the part of the Constitution on the emergency powers of the President, I always point out the congenital deformity of provisions crafted in dislike for Marcos and for martial law. Under the present provision, a president’s hands are not only tied. The commander-in-chief is in fact shackled: Congress has the power to review the declaration of Martial Law, and even set it aside, and any interested citizen may question the factual basis for its declaration before the Supreme Court that may also nullify it.
These restrictions, I have insisted, are a disservice in fact to the Constitution, for it can so easily occur to any president faced with a grave peril to the nation, that the most expedient recourse left to him protect the Republic without being stymied in his efforts by restrictive provisions is by sweeping aside the entire Constitution – and then of course, it is “anything goes” in a revolutionary, extra-constitutional situation! The point is to keep the Constitution – and its interpretation by our courts – sufficiently pliant so as to keep executive (and all government action) within its bounds!

Whether or not the conditions laid down in the Constitution for the declaration of martial law now exist is a different question, and I do not think they do. And I roundly reject the proposal to characterize the operation of foreign drug syndicates in the country as “invasion.” There is a legally accepted definition of “invasion” as of “rebellion,” and it never serves the purposes of law well to trifle with terms and their definitions.

Martial law need not be evil. The abuse of freedoms and liberties can, especially when such rambunctiousness becomes pernicious to the viability of the Republic and a threat to the rights of others. It is they who steadfastly reject the possibility of martial law and would stay the hand of a president poised to declare it under all circumstances who must learn the ways of the Constitution again.

There is, after all, an irreplaceable role of force in the rule of law. – Rappler.com