Presidential Decree No. 1

Also known as: Integrated Reorganization Plan — the plan the decree enacted, used interchangeably with the decree · Presidential Decree No. 1 (1972) and the Integrated Reorganization Plan · PD No. 1, s. 1972 · PD 1 · The 1972 Integrated Reorganization Plan decree

Government

Definition

Presidential Decree No. 1 (September 24, 1972), styled “Reorganizing the Executive Branch of the National Government,” is the founding decree of the martial-law reorganization: acting under Proclamation No. 1081 of September 21, 1972 and General Order No. 1 of September 22, 1972, President Ferdinand E. Marcos decreed that the Integrated Reorganization Plan (IRP) — prepared by the Commission on Reorganization and then pending before Congress as a certified priority measure — “shall be… adopted, approved, and made as part of the law of the land.” (LawPhil — PD No. 1) The decree created a Department of Public Information in lieu of the Public Information Office recommended by the Plan, reserved to the President the power to announce “changes and modification in the Integrated Reorganization Plan… from time to time, as necessity requires,” and directed that implementation “shall be carried out by Letters of Implementation” issued by the President or his duly authorized representative. (LawPhil — PD No. 1)

The Plan the decree enacted remade the executive branch in one instrument. It organized the country’s provinces into eleven regions numbered I through XI, established the Career Executive Service and its Board in Article IV, Part III as the third level of the civil service, abolished and redistributed functions across bureaus — the Public Service Commission, for example, was abolished and its responsibilities distributed among multiple regulatory boards — and rebuilt agencies bureau by bureau, the Budget Commission emerging with four retained operating offices and five staff units. (Wikipedia — Regions of the Philippines, LawPhil — G.R. No. 196890, Wikipedia — LTFRB, Wikipedia — Department of Budget and Management) The IRP remained the structural law of the bureaucracy until the post-EDSA reorganization — the Freedom Constitution’s directive to “completely reorganize the government” and the Administrative Code of 1987 that recodified and superseded it. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, LawPhil — EO 292)

Identities

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Also Known As

Integrated Reorganization Plan — the plan the decree enacted, used interchangeably with the decree
Presidential Decree No. 1 (1972) and the Integrated Reorganization Plan
PD No. 1, s. 1972
PD 1
The 1972 Integrated Reorganization Plan decree

Examples and Analogies

Legislation by annexation: because Congress had not acted on the reorganization bill, PD 1 made law not by drafting provisions but by attaching an entire prepared plan to a four-paragraph decree — the Plan becoming “part of the law of the land” whole, the decree functioning as its enacting clause. (LawPhil — PD No. 1)
A statute built to be amended in use: the decree authorized the President to announce changes in the Plan “as necessity requires” and to implement it piecemeal through Letters of Implementation — a legislative design closer to an annually revisable corporate charter than to an ordinary statute. (LawPhil — PD No. 1)
Verified decree data:
Title: “Reorganizing the Executive Branch of the National Government”
Date: done in Manila, September 24, 1972, pursuant to Proclamation No. 1081 (September 21, 1972) and General Order No. 1 (September 22, 1972), as amended
Antecedent: the Integrated Reorganization Plan of the Commission on Reorganization, pending in Congress as a presidentially certified priority measure before Proclamation 1081
Special proviso: creation of a Department of Public Information in lieu of the Public Information Office within the Office of the President
Implementation mechanism: Letters of Implementation, to be issued by the President or his duly authorized representative
Structural acts under the Plan: eleven regions (I–XI); the Career Executive Service and CESB (Article IV, Part III); abolition of the Public Service Commission and distribution of its functions; reconstruction of the Budget Commission

Usage Scenarios

1. Tracing an Agency’s Genealogy

The decree is the hinge of twentieth-century Philippine administrative history: agencies abolished, merged, or created in the 1970s — regulatory boards inheriting the Public Service Commission’s functions, the reorganized budget machinery, the ministries themselves — trace their present form to the IRP as enacted by PD 1 and as modified thereafter. (Wikipedia — LTFRB, Wikipedia — Department of Budget and Management)

2. Studying How Martial Law Governed

As the first-numbered decree of the Proclamation 1081 regime — this wiki’s entry on the proclamation documents the setting — PD 1 shows the mechanism in miniature: a measure Congress had been asked to pass, withheld from Congress, and enacted by decree with built-in amendment and implementation powers reserved to the President. (LawPhil — PD No. 1)

3. Researching Regionalization and the Career Service

Two of the Plan’s creations still organize the state: the regional framework — eleven regions in 1972, the ancestor of today’s administrative regions — and the Career Executive Service, the third level of the civil service documented in this wiki’s entry on it, established by Article IV, Part III of the Plan and still governed by the Board it created. (Wikipedia — Regions of the Philippines, LawPhil — G.R. No. 196890)

Strategies

Adopt rather than draft: by enacting the Commission on Reorganization’s finished plan wholesale, the decree captured years of technical work — and the legitimacy of a measure already certified to Congress — in a single signature. (LawPhil — PD No. 1, LawPhil — RA 5435)
Implement by installments: the Letters of Implementation device let the reorganization proceed agency by agency, each Letter carrying out a piece of the Plan without returning to any legislature. (LawPhil — PD No. 1)
Reserve the amendment power: authority to announce changes “as necessity requires” kept the Plan adjustable in office — the instrument through which the reorganization was tuned across the Marcos years. (LawPhil — PD No. 1)
For researchers: the decree’s text and the Plan are distinct documents — LawPhil carries the decree, while the Plan’s provisions surface in implementing issuances and court recitations, such as the Supreme Court’s citation of Article IV, Part III for the Career Executive Service. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 196890)

Security and Safety Measures

Announced amendment as legal certainty: the decree required that changes in the Plan “be correspondingly announced” by the President or his authorized representative — a publication requirement meant to keep the bureaucracy’s governing structure knowable even as it changed. (LawPhil — PD No. 1)
Inherited employee protections: the Plan descended from Republic Act No. 5435 (September 9, 1968), whose reorganization scheme protected displaced employees — preserved eligibility, preferential re-employment, and a gratuity of one month’s salary per year of service — the welfare baseline the reorganization debate had already fixed. (LawPhil — RA 5435)
Compliance compulsion: all heads of departments, chiefs of bureaus, agencies, instrumentalities, and government-owned or controlled corporations were ordered to “act accordingly” — the decree’s own enforcement clause. (LawPhil — PD No. 1)
Constitutional re-founding: the post-EDSA instruments — the Freedom Constitution’s mandate to reorganize and the Administrative Code of 1987’s general repealing clause of inconsistent laws — supplied the corrective machinery under which the IRP’s rule by decree was wound down. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, LawPhil — EO 292)

Historical Context

The IRP began as ordinary legislation. Republic Act No. 5435 of September 9, 1968 authorized the President, “with the help of a Commission on Reorganization,” to reorganize the executive departments; the nine-member Commission — three senators, three congressmen, three presidential appointees — was to submit an integrated reorganization plan by December 31, 1969, for Congress to approve or reject as a whole. The Plan that commission produced was before Congress as a certified priority measure when Proclamation No. 1081 was issued on September 21, 1972; three days later, on September 24, 1972, Marcos — citing the pending measures in the decree’s own whereas clauses — enacted the Plan into law by decree. (LawPhil — RA 5435, LawPhil — PD No. 1)

Implementation followed through Letters of Implementation issued under the decree’s authority, and the Plan’s map took hold: eleven regions over the provinces; a Career Executive Service with its Board as the civil service’s third level; regulatory boards carved from the abolished Public Service Commission; the Budget Commission rebuilt around four retained offices. (Wikipedia — Regions of the Philippines, LawPhil — G.R. No. 196890, Wikipedia — LTFRB, Wikipedia — Department of Budget and Management) The 1973 Constitution’s parliamentary forms later reshaped the departments — Presidential Decree No. 1397 of June 2, 1978 converted the departments into ministries, their secretaries becoming ministers, and wrote the Career Executive Service into the deputy-minister design. (LawPhil — PD 1397)

The reorganization outlived its author only in part. The Freedom Constitution (Proclamation No. 3, March 25, 1986) directed the new President to “completely reorganize the government and eradicate unjust and oppressive structures,” and Executive Order No. 292 — the Administrative Code of 1987, done on July 25, 1987 — recodified the government’s “major structural, functional and procedural principles and rules of governance” in one instrument, repealing all inconsistent laws; yet the Code itself restated parts of the IRP settlement, from the regional framework to the third-level Career Executive Service. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, LawPhil — EO 292)

Challenges and Controversies

Rule by Decree

PD 1 is the emblematic act of decree-governance: a bill Congress had never passed became “part of the law of the land” by a single signature under martial-law powers, with amendment and implementation authorities reserved to the executive — the constitutional questions of which this wiki’s entries on Proclamation No. 1081 and the 1973 Constitution carry. (LawPhil — PD No. 1)

Scale and Dislocation

Reorganizing “the entire Executive Branch” by one plan displaced officials and offices wholesale; the RA 5435 debate had already conceded the human cost in its gratuity and re-employment protections, and the decree-era implementation through Letters of Implementation gave affected employees no legislative forum in which to contest their agency’s abolition or rebuilding. (LawPhil — RA 5435, LawPhil — PD No. 1)

The Ministries Interlude

The Plan’s departmental structure was bent to the 1973 Constitution’s parliamentary forms — PD 1397’s 1978 conversion of departments into ministries, with political deputy ministers liaising to the Batasang Pambansa — an arrangement the 1987 settlement reversed, restoring departments under the presidential system and testing how much of the IRP survived in name versus in substance. (LawPhil — PD 1397, LawPhil — EO 292)

What Survived, What Was Repealed

The post-EDSA codification left an unsettled ledger: the Administrative Code of 1987 repealed only what was inconsistent, so IRP fragments continued to govern where untouched — a patchwork that keeps courts and administrators tracing particular agencies back to the 1972 Plan, and that makes PD 1 a living source of bureaucratic structure. (LawPhil — EO 292, LawPhil — G.R. No. 196890)