Proclamation No. 9

Also known as: Proclamation No. 9, s. 1986 — the issuance-series styling · The "Law Governing the Constitutional Commission of 1986" — the instrument's operative title ([LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9](https://www.lawphil.net/executive/proc/proc1986/proc_9_1986.html "Proclamation No. 9 (April 23, 1986): Law Governing the Constitutional Commission of 1986 — The LawPhil Project")) · The Constitutional Commission proclamation — the descriptive reference in transition-period literature · The April 1986 convening proclamation — distinguishing it from Proclamation No. 3 of March 25, 1986

Government

Definition

Proclamation No. 9 is the proclamation of April 23, 1986 by which President Corazon C. Aquino promulgated the “Law Governing the Constitutional Commission of 1986” — the organizing instrument, signed by Executive Secretary Joker P. Arroyo at Malacañang, Manila, that gave the Constitutional Commission of 1986 its members, officers, powers, deadlines, and money. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9) Issued under Article V of Proclamation No. 3 — the Freedom Constitution of March 25, 1986, whose fifth article ordered the appointment, within sixty days, of a commission of thirty to fifty natural-born citizens to draft a permanent charter — Proclamation No. 9 is the operational sequel: where Proclamation No. 3 promised a commission, Proclamation No. 9 supplied its statute book. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)

The instrument fixed a commission of up to fifty members appointed as national, regional, and sectoral representatives, directed to open its first session on June 2, 1986 at the former Batasang Pambansa Session Hall and to “endeavor to complete its work on or before September 2, 1986,” with the draft submitted to the President for a plebiscite within sixty days. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9) As implemented, the commission that convened on June 2, 1986 — forty-eight members under its elected president, former Justice Cecilia Muñoz-Palma — missed the September target, approved its draft on October 12, 1986, presented it on October 15, 1986, and the resulting 1987 Constitution was ratified in the February 2, 1987 plebiscite and proclaimed in force by Proclamation No. 58 on February 11, 1987. (Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)

Identities

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Library of Congress Subject Headings	Constitutional law–Philippines
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Google Scholar	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Proclamation+No.+9%22+constitutional+commission+1986
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Also Known As

Proclamation No. 9, s. 1986 — the issuance-series styling
The “Law Governing the Constitutional Commission of 1986” — the instrument’s operative title (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
The Constitutional Commission proclamation — the descriptive reference in transition-period literature
The April 1986 convening proclamation — distinguishing it from Proclamation No. 3 of March 25, 1986

Examples and Analogies

A statute disguised as a proclamation: the instrument reads like an organic act for a legislature — qualifications, oath, quorum, discipline, immunities, per diems, audit — because that is what it is: the commission’s constitution, enacted by a President exercising the Freedom Constitution’s vesting of legislative power in her office. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)
A commission built to its own deadline: like a charter with a sunset date, the proclamation orders first reading for June 2, 1986, sets September 2, 1986 as the completion benchmark, and schedules its own terminus — a plebiscite within sixty days of submission. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Verified instrument data:
Date and place: April 23, 1986, Malacañang, Manila; President Corazon C. Aquino; by the President: Joker P. Arroyo, Executive Secretary; effective upon issuance (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Ancestry: implements Article V of Proclamation No. 3 (March 25, 1986), which directed a commission of thirty to fifty members within sixty days, after sectoral consultation (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)
Membership: up to fifty appointees — national representatives of governmental experience or recognized competence; regional representatives apportioned among thirteen regions by population, at least one per region; sectoral representatives of farmers, fishermen, workers, students, professionals, business, the military, the academe, and ethnic communities, among others (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Qualifications: natural-born citizen, qualified voter, of recognized probity, independence, nationalism, and patriotism; public officials resign upon appointment; unpardoned moral-turpitude convictions disqualify; the commission judges its own members’ qualifications (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Oath and ineligibilities: members swear to finish within the period and to preserve the Freedom Constitution, and may neither run in the first post-ratification elections nor accept government appointment during the sessions or within one year after final adjournment (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Organization: opening June 2, 1986, a vice-president presiding until a chairman is elected; majority quorum; internal rules; expulsion by two-thirds vote; public plenary sessions and public hearings; arrest privilege for offenses up to six years during sessions; speech-and-debate immunity (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Deadlines and ratification: completion target September 2, 1986; plebiscite set by the President within sixty days of submission; effectiveness upon ratification by majority of votes cast (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Funding: twenty million pesos, exempt from Ministry of the Budget rules but accountable to the Commission on Audit; members at five hundred pesos per diem plus travel expenses (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)

Usage Scenarios

1. Tracing the Post-EDSA Constitutional Chain

Proclamation No. 9 is the second link in the documented transition sequence — Proclamation No. 3 (March 25, 1986), Proclamation No. 9 (April 23), the June 2 convening, the October 12 approval and October 15 presentation of the draft, the February 2, 1987 plebiscite, and Proclamation No. 58’s February 11 proclamation — the standard case study in converting revolutionary authority into ratified text inside a year. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)

2. Studying Commission Design

Comparative constitution-writing courses use the instrument as a design document: apportionment across national, regional, and sectoral seats; incompatibility rules forcing incumbents to resign and barring members from the first elections under the charter they write; public hearings and recorded sessions; parliamentary-style immunities — a complete commission toolkit in one proclamation. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)

3. Documenting the 1986 Appointment Record

Researchers reconstructing the membership work from the instrument’s implementation: the first forty-four appointees announced on May 25, 1986 at the “Reunion of EDSA Heroes” at Camp Aguinaldo, five seats offered to the opposition KBL of which four were filled, the Iglesia ni Cristo’s declination of its seat, and the resulting forty-eight members under President Cecilia Muñoz-Palma, Vice President Ambrosio Padilla, Floor Leader Napoleon Rama, and Secretary General Flerida Ruth Pineda-Romero. (Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986)

Strategies

Read the two proclamations together: Proclamation No. 3’s Article V supplies the mandate, the membership ceiling, and the plebiscite deadline; Proclamation No. 9 supplies everything else — cite the implementing instrument for organizational detail and the Freedom Constitution for authority. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Use the register dates: the documented calendar is April 23, 1986 (issuance), June 2 (convening), September 2 (benchmark), October 12 (draft approved), October 15 (presentation), February 2, 1987 (plebiscite), February 11 (proclamation in force) — the sequence this wiki’s entries on the commission and the plebiscite carry. (Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)
For biographers of the members: the oath and disqualification provisions explain the career patterns around the commission — the mid-1986 resignations of incumbent officials and the members’ absence from the first post-ratification ballots. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Note what the instrument did not do: it promulgated no constitutional text and touched no existing law — it organized a body; the drafting record belongs to the commission’s proceedings, the ratification record to the plebiscite. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)

Security and Safety Measures

Public sessions as a structural safeguard: public hearings for people’s participation and public, recorded plenary sessions — transparency written into the drafting process itself. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Independence protections: the commission judges its members’ qualifications; sessions carry arrest privilege and speech-and-debate immunity; and the disqualification rules wall the body off from incumbent office and the fruits of office. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
Fiscal accountability: the twenty-million-peso appropriation was exempted from ordinary budget rules but expressly accountable to the Commission on Audit upon completion — speed in spending, audit in the settle-up. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)
A ratification check the drafters could not control: the instrument’s terminus — plebiscite within sixty days of submission, effectiveness only “upon ratification by a majority of the votes cast” — placed the final safeguard with the electorate, exercised on February 2, 1987. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)

Historical Context

Proclamation No. 9 was written five weeks into the Freedom Constitution. Proclamation No. 3 of March 25, 1986 had adopted portions of the 1973 Constitution, vested legislative power in the President, and ordered in Article V a thirty-to-fifty-member commission within sixty days; Aquino issued the commission’s governing law on April 23, 1986, and the first forty-four appointees were announced at Camp Aguinaldo on May 25. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9, Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986) The commission convened on June 2, 1986 at the Batasang Pambansa Complex under Cecilia Muñoz-Palma — the first woman to sit on the Philippine Supreme Court — with members including Joaquin Bernas, Hilario Davide Jr., Blas Ople, Christian Monsod, Jose Laurel Jr., Roberto Concepcion (the former Chief Justice whose resolution had recorded the Javellana votes), and the filmmaker Lino Brocka, who resigned on August 28, 1986. (Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986)

The September 2 benchmark passed unmet; the commission approved its draft on October 12, 1986 and presented it on October 15. (Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986) The plebiscite followed on February 2, 1987 — 16,622,111 votes for ratification against 4,953,375, with 209,730 abstentions, in a COMELEC canvass of 83,288 precincts — and on February 11, 1987 Proclamation No. 58 declared the 1987 Constitution “duly ratified by the Filipino people and… effective and in full force and effect,” retiring the Freedom Constitution and its implementing machinery. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)

Challenges and Controversies

Appointed, Not Elected

The commission of 1986 was a body of presidential appointees — unlike the elected conventions of 1934 and 1971 — a design the proclamation implements directly, defended as the only practicable course for a revolutionary government without a legislature and criticized as substituting selection for election at the founding moment of the restored democracy. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9, Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986)

The Fifty-Forty-Eight Bookkeeping

The instrument authorized up to fifty seats and history filled forty-eight — the arithmetic of five opposition seats offered, four filled, one declined — so references to a “50-member” and a “48-member” commission both circulate and both need the fuller record to reconcile. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9, Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986)

Deadline Missed

The command to “endeavor to complete its work on or before September 2, 1986” was not met — approval came October 12, presentation October 15 — a six-week overrun defended as the cost of public hearings and contested provisions, and the standing illustration that the instrument’s deadlines were exhortatory. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9, Wikipedia — Constitutional Commission of 1986)

Instrument Confused with Charter

Proclamation No. 9 is routinely conflated with the Freedom Constitution itself, both being 1986 Aquino proclamations in the constitutional corpus; the record keeps them distinct — Proclamation No. 3 promulgated the interim charter on March 25, 1986, Proclamation No. 9 organized the drafting commission on April 23, 1986 — the distinction this wiki’s entries on the Freedom Constitution and Proclamation No. 3 carry in parallel. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 9)