The Supreme Court has dismissed a petition assailing the constitutionality of Republic Act No. 9372 or the Human Security Act of 2007, better known as the Anti-Terror Law.
In an en banc decision, the SC granted the petition filed by the Office of the Solicitor General.
The SC reversed and set aside several orders of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court that cleared the way for the petition for declaratory relief filed by the group of human rights lawyer Harry Roque with the RTC against the law.
The RTC earlier issued orders denying the motion to dismiss filed by the OSG ruling that the court did not pass upon the constitutionality of RA 9372 and that the petition of Roque's group was properly filed.
The OSG filed another petition, however, it did not get a favorable ruling from the RTC.
This prompted the OSG to take the case to the SC.
In its ruling, the SC said the RTC "exceeded its jurisdiction when it ruled that private respondents' petition had met all the requisites for an action for declaratory relief."
"Consequently, its denial of the subject motion to dismiss was altogether improper," the SC added.
"[I]n the same light that the court dismissed the SC petitions in the Southern Hemisphere cases on the basis of, among others, lack of actual justifiable controversy (of the ripening seeds of one), the RTC should have dismissed private respondents' petition for declaratory relief all the same," it said.
The SC dismissed in 2011 a similar petition against the Anti-Terror Law saying "petitioners did not even allege with any modicum of particularity how respondents acted without or in excess of their respective jurisdictions, or with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction."
The SC had it that RA 9372 is a penal statute and does not even provide for any appropriation from Congress for its implementation, while none of the petitioners had alleged any direct and personal interest in the implementation of the same.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=576581
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