RETIRED Associate Justice Dante Tinga yesterday asked the Supreme Court (SC) to invalidate an ordinance passed by the Taguig City Council last month that increased the number of councilors per district from eight to 12.
Tinga cited two grounds before the SC as he argued that the ordinance is unconstitutional: that the increase of the number of city councilors or city council seats requires a law, and that the power to do such exclusively lies with Congress; and that there is no law delegating the power to increase the number of city councilor seats to the city council.
“In the absence of such law, the assailed ordinance is unconstitutional,” Tinga, who is the father of former Taguig mayor Dante Tinga, said.
The retired SC justice also named the Commission on Elections (Comelec) as a respondent for promulgating a resolution that seeks to implement the “invalid city ordinance.”
“The city ordinance and the Comelec resolution are unconstitutional because neither body has the power to legislate the matter. Only Congress has the power to legislate such act,” he said as he underscored the importance of issuing a temporary restraining order to stop the ordinance’s implementation.
Tinga also impleaded the Senate and the House of Representatives for ratifying the assailed city ordinance through a concurrent resolution.
“The Concurrent Resolution does not have a force and effect of a law because it did not undergo the prescribed three readings for a required measure to become a law under the 1987 Constitution and it did not bear the required signature of the President also (mandated) under the Constitution,” he said.
Tinga said the legal problem could have been avoided had Congress passed a law creating a third legislative district in Taguig City to accommodate the 10 EMBO barangays.
The EMBO barangays formerly belonged to Makati City but came under Taguig’s jurisdiction after the former lost its territorial dispute in 2022, with the SC latter affirming Taguig’s win.
Tinga said he had proposed to Speaker Martin Romualdez as early as June 2024 the creation of a new legislative district in Taguig out of the EMBO barangays, adding that at the time, there was still enough time for the House to pass such legislation.
“Regrettably, nothing came out of the letter,” Tinga said, adding that two of Taguig’s lawmakers – Reps. Ricardo Cruz Jr. and Amparo Maria Zamora – also declined to support his proposal.
