ARTICLE 8. All public officials elected or appointed may be impeached for culpable violation of the Constitution, treason, bribery, and assumption of illegal power, high crimes, misdemeanors, and gross dereliction of duty, coupled with the doctrine of command responsibility. The doctrine of command responsibility involves the continued acts of dereliction of duty of subordinates or one serious act of dereliction of duty which was tolerated and did not receive pertinent action from the immediate superior.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
This provision enumerates the causes of impeachment, and explains the doctrine of command responsibility. All constitutional public officials are subject to impeachment proceedings in all levels of government.
The prosecuting arms for this purpose are several. (See Articles 49, 53, 58, and 60).
Withdrawal of confidence by Parliament from the President and the Prime Minister is another way of changing the leadership of the government. But it can only take place midway the six-year term (See Article 34).
CHAPTER II
Constitutional Powers Delegated To The States
Article 9. The Federal Republic shall have five States, namely: Northern Luzon, Southern Luzon, Visayas, Muslim Mindanao and Christian Mindanao. Their respective boundaries shall be defined by Parliament. Powers not delegated to the States shall remain with the Federal Government.
The States shall have exclusive jurisdiction over the following:
- Ownership of public lands and inland natural resources, except mineral resources, within the respective States, and their disposition in the form of leases not to exceed 75 years, including renewals, and the regulation of their conservation, development, processing, and industrialization. This shall include the land, air, sand and water which may be generated in their respective inland boundaries.
The Federal Government shall regulate the air traffic and any portion of the seas surrounding the different States beyond the three-mile limit. Ownership of resources beyond the three-mile and up to the two hundred-mile limit now claimed by several nations, including the entire sea water within the Archipelagic Doctrine, as well as the islands, claimed by the Philippines in the Spratly group of islands, shall belong to the Federal Government.
- Inland public works of all kinds, excluding sea and airports open to interstate and international traffic.
- Matters affecting the culture and education in their respective territories, in the secondary level within the framework of the national identity.
National and international TV and radio stations shall be operated by the Federal Government; not more than five TV stations and ten radio stations shall be licensed by the Government to private initiative.
- Peace and order, including the administration of justice and its sanctions under the uniform substantive laws, public and private, civil, commercial, penal and procedural, the enactment of which shall be the exclusive jurisdiction of Parliament. Muslim and Christians, in their premarital agreement before the Court of Justice, may bind themselves to the law of persons and family relations of the religion of their choice, which the courts of justice will apply.
- Welfare and social security.
- The establishment and operation of public transportation and the licensing of the public utilities operating within the State.
- The determination of provincial and city living wages in line with
the cost of living in the area, and the adjudication of labor disputes with compulsory arbitration where the State and the national interest are involved.
Article 10. The following areas shall be the concurrent jurisdiction of the Federal Government and the States:
- Matters affecting sanitation, health, and ecological conservation.
- Development of agriculture and the problems of soil, water conservation, irrigation, and reforestation.
- Promotion of the democratization of wealth, of land reform, of cooperatives with members voting on the basis of patronage.
- Promotion of low and medium cost housing and industrial estates.
EXPLANATORY NOTES:
The Federal Government shall be vested with exclusive jurisdiction over the delimitation of the boundaries of the five States, subject to the general lines provided in this Constitution. Its most urgent task shall be to divide the islands of Mindanao into two States, the Muslim and the Christian areas.
Powers not delegated to the States in this Constitution, belong to the Federal Government, namely:
- Ownership of mineral resources throughout the Philippines.
- The regulation of air traffic and any portion of the seas surrounding the different States beyond the three-mile limit and within the two hundred mile limit, including the entire sea water within the Archipelagic Doctrine.
This includes jurisdiction over the islands in the Spratly group claimed by the Philippines.
- Jurisdiction over interstate and international sea ports and airports.
- Jurisdiction over all elementary education, colleges and universities, national and international TV and radio stations throughout the country with the limitation that not more than five TV stations and ten radio stations are to be licensed by the Federal Government to private entities.
- The enactment of uniform substantive laws, public and private, civil, commercial, penal and procedural. (To be continued/PN)