Proclamation No. 3

Also known as: The Freedom Constitution proclamation — the descriptive reference used in constitutional literature · Proclamation No. 3, s. 1986 — the issuance-series styling · The provisional constitution proclamation of March 25, 1986 — the date-tagged citation · The 1986 Freedom Constitution proclamation — distinguishing it from the charter it adopted

Government

Definition

Proclamation No. 3 is the presidential proclamation of March 25, 1986 by which President Corazon C. Aquino promulgated the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines — the interim charter universally known as the Freedom Constitution — one month after the EDSA People Power Revolution installed her government. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — People Power Revolution) Styled “Declaring a National Policy to Implement Reforms Mandated by the People Protecting Their Basic Rights, Adopting a Provisional Constitution, and Providing for an Orderly Transition to a Government Under a New Constitution,” it was issued “by virtue of the power vested in me by the sovereign mandate of the people” — not under the amendment machinery of the 1973 Constitution — and was signed at Manila, with Joker P. Arroyo as Executive Secretary, taking effect upon its promulgation. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)

In a single instrument the proclamation worked a triple legal operation: it adopted portions of the Marcos-era 1973 Constitution, omitted that charter’s legislative articles — abolishing in effect the office of Prime Minister and the Regular Batasang Pambansa — and vested legislative power in the President until a legislature was elected under a new constitution. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines) Its Article V then ordered the appointment, within sixty days, of a commission of thirty to fifty natural-born citizens “of recognized probity, known for their independence, nationalism and patriotism” to draft a permanent charter for ratification in a plebiscite — the mandate that became the Constitutional Commission of 1986 and, through it, the 1987 Constitution proclaimed in force by Proclamation No. 58 on February 11, 1987. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Philippine Constitutional Commission of 1986, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58) The charter the proclamation attached is analyzed in this wiki’s entry on the Freedom Constitution; this entry covers the instrument itself — the title, recitals, and seven articles by which the revolutionary fact of February 1986 was converted into interim constitutional rule, the same instrument-to-charter division this wiki maintains between Proclamation No. 58 and the 1987 Constitution.

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A
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Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	Constitutional law–Philippines
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AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	Proclamation No. 3 March 25 1986 Freedom Constitution provisional constitution Aquino sovereign mandate legislative power Article V Constitutional Commission 1987 Constitution
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

The Freedom Constitution proclamation — the descriptive reference used in constitutional literature
Proclamation No. 3, s. 1986 — the issuance-series styling
The provisional constitution proclamation of March 25, 1986 — the date-tagged citation
The 1986 Freedom Constitution proclamation — distinguishing it from the charter it adopted

Examples and Analogies

A constitution disguised as a proclamation: the instrument works like an enabling act and a charter bound in one cover — its first article amends the legal order by adoption and omission, its fifth schedules its own replacement, so that reading the seven articles is reading both the interim constitution and its demolition order. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)
Revolution wearing legal dress: the WHEREAS clauses declare that the new government “was installed through a direct exercise of the power of the Filipino people” and that this was done “in defiance of the provisions of the 1973 Constitution, as amended” — the proclamation stating openly what it then converts into legal form. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)
Verified instrument data:
Title: “Declaring a National Policy to Implement Reforms Mandated by the People Protecting Their Basic Rights, Adopting a Provisional Constitution, and Providing for an Orderly Transition to a Government Under a New Constitution”
Date and place: March 25, 1986, City of Manila; signed by President Corazon C. Aquino; by the President: Joker P. Arroyo, Executive Secretary
Authority clause: issued “by virtue of the power vested in me by the sovereign mandate of the people”
Article I: adopts in toto the 1973 Constitution’s Articles I (National Territory), III (Citizenship), IV (Bill of Rights), V (Duties and Obligations of Citizens), and VI (Suffrage); adopts Articles II, VII, X, XI, XIII, XIV, and XV insofar as not inconsistent — the 1973 charter’s legislative and prime-ministerial articles omitted
Article II, Section 1: “Until a legislature is elected and convened under a New Constitution, the President shall continue to exercise legislative power,” with six named priorities from government reorganization and rights enforcement to ill-gotten-wealth recovery and the restoration of peace
Article III: government reorganization, with incumbents continuing unless replaced within one year from February 25, 1986
Article IV: existing laws remain operative; the President may review and, when the national interest requires, amend, modify, or revoke natural-resource contracts, concessions, and permits
Article V: a commission of not less than thirty nor more than fifty natural-born citizens, appointed within sixty days after public consultation, to hold public hearings and public, fully recorded plenary sessions; the draft to be submitted to the President, who fixes a plebiscite within sixty days; the new constitution “valid and effective upon ratification by a majority of the votes cast”
Article VI: national elections as provided by the new constitution; local elections on a date set by the President, not earlier than the plebiscite
Article VII: effect upon promulgation, with a consolidated official text to be published in English and Pilipino

Usage Scenarios

1. Citing the Interim Legal Order

Every act of the revolutionary government between March 25, 1986 and the new charter’s effectivity rests on this proclamation — the reorganization decrees, the freedom constitution’s Article II legislation, and the sequestration campaign — so legal writing on the transition period begins with Proclamation No. 3 as the source of authority. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)

2. Teaching the Post-EDSA Transition

The proclamation is the first link of the chain this wiki’s family of entries traces — Proclamation No. 3, Proclamation No. 9 (which convened the commission in April 1986), the Constitutional Commission of 1986 (convened June 2), the plebiscite of February 2, 1987, and Proclamation No. 58 — the standard case study of converting revolutionary authority into constitutional authority inside eleven months. (Wikipedia — Philippine Constitutional Commission of 1986, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)

3. Analyzing Interim Constitution Design

Comparativists read the proclamation as a model of transitional craft: wholesale adoption of an existing bill of rights, omission of the discredited institutions, a bounded decree power tied to named priorities, and self-liquidating sixty-day clocks — design choices examined in this wiki’s Freedom Constitution entry. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

4. Dating the Abolition of the Premiership and the Batasang Pambansa

The proclamation is the instrument by which the 1973 Constitution’s parliamentary structures ceased to operate: by omitting the legislative articles and vesting legislative power in the President, it abolished in effect the office of Prime Minister and the Regular Batasang Pambansa — the institutional break this wiki’s entries on the 1973 Constitution and the Freedom Constitution document. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)

Strategies

Legality by declared mandate: the proclamation grounded itself in the “sovereign mandate of the people” expressed at EDSA rather than in the 1973 charter’s amendment rules — converting revolutionary facts into legal form without pretending to derive one from the other, the same formula its successor Proclamation No. 58 would repeat. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)
Salvage what worked: adopting the 1973 rights, citizenship, and suffrage articles verbatim preserved legal continuity and spared the interim government from re-legislating basics — while the omission of the Batasang Pambansa and the premiership dismantled the dictatorship’s institutional core. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)
Legislate with a to-do list: Article II tied the President’s decree power to six named priorities — reorganization, rights enforcement, economic rehabilitation, ill-gotten-wealth recovery, anti-graft, and peace — framing concentrated power as a bounded remedial program. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)
Bury the sunset in the text: the sixty-day clocks of Article V — for appointing the commission and for the plebiscite — made the provisional order self-liquidating by design, the discipline that kept interim rule from becoming permanent rule. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)
Sequence elections after ratification: Article VI placed national elections under the new constitution’s rules and local elections no earlier than the plebiscite, so the first votes of the restoration were cast under the ratified charter rather than the provisional one. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)

Security and Safety Measures

Rights continuity as the floor: by adopting the 1973 Bill of Rights in toto, the proclamation guaranteed that the fall of the dictatorship opened no rights vacuum during the interregnum — civil and political liberties operated without interruption. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)
Succession rules in unstable times: Article II provided that the Vice-President succeeds on a permanent presidential vacancy, and that if the vice-presidency also falls the Cabinet chooses a Minister with portfolio to act as President — insurance against decapitation amid the coup attempts that followed, as this wiki’s Corazon Aquino entry documents. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)
Ordered reorganization: Article III required that abolished offices’ funds, records, and properties pass to successor bodies and that separated officials receive earned retirement benefits — reorganization by rule rather than purge. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3)
For researchers: cite the instrument as Proclamation No. 3 of March 25, 1986, and keep its two dates of death distinct — some accounts end the Freedom Constitution at the February 2, 1987 ratification and others at the February 11, 1987 issuance of Proclamation No. 58, the convention noted in this wiki’s Freedom Constitution entry. Secondary summaries also sometimes swap the parenthetical labels of the 1973 charter’s Articles III and IV; the proclamation’s own text adopts Article III (Citizenship) and Article IV (Bill of Rights). (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58)

Historical Context

The proclamation answered the constitutional emergency created in four days of February 1986. The disputed February 7 snap election, the COMELEC walkout, and the EDSA uprising that ended twenty years of Marcos rule left the new president governing a state whose formal charter belonged to the deposed regime; rather than restore the 1935 Constitution or reform the 1973 instrument, Aquino chose a provisional proclamation that declared the new government the product of the people’s direct exercise of power. On March 25, 1986 she signed the seven-article instrument, which kept the 1973 rights articles, abolished the premiership and the Batasang Pambansa by omission, and vested legislative power in the presidency pending a new legislature. (Wikipedia — People Power Revolution, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

The provisional order did its work in under a year. Proclamation No. 9 convened the Constitutional Commission in April 1986; the 48 members met from June 2 under Cecilia Muñoz-Palma; the draft was approved October 12 and presented October 15; and on February 2, 1987 the electorate ratified it with 16,622,111 votes — 77.04 percent — with Proclamation No. 58 proclaiming the 1987 Constitution in force on February 11. (Wikipedia — Philippine Constitutional Commission of 1986, Wikipedia — 1987 Philippine constitutional plebiscite, LawPhil — Proclamation No. 58) The Freedom Constitution thereupon lapsed, leaving Proclamation No. 3 as the precedent Philippine constitutional law cites whenever a government must bridge the gap between a fallen constitutional order and a ratified new one — the transition examined in full in this wiki’s Freedom Constitution and 1987 Constitution entries.

Challenges and Controversies

The Revolutionary Mandate

The proclamation’s authority rested on a proclaimed mandate, not on the amendment procedures of any existing constitution — issued by a president who had lost the official count of the February 7 snap election and won power by revolution, as this wiki’s entry on the 1986 snap presidential election records. The ensuing Supreme Court jurisprudence accepted the necessity, but the theoretical question — whether legality can be born of illegality, and who may judge the mandate — resurfaces whenever extra-constitutional change is proposed; the charter-level version of the debate is treated in this wiki’s Freedom Constitution entry. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

Legislative Power in Presidential Hands

Article II’s vesting of legislative power in the President, joined to reorganization authority and the power to review natural-resource contracts, gave the interim government decree powers resembling those the revolution had just overthrown — defended as temporary and purposive, criticized as presidential rule by decree in rewritten form. The proclamation’s answer was the sunset structure itself: the sixty-day clocks of Article V and the requirement of majority ratification, the safeguards discussed in this wiki’s Freedom Constitution entry. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Constitution of the Philippines)

Speed Against Deliberation

The proclamation compressed constitution-making into a timetable critics called reckless for a permanent charter — sixty days to appoint the commission, sixty days from submission to plebiscite — and defenders called the price of restoring constitutional normalcy quickly; the commission’s own overrun of its September 2, 1986 target showed the strain, as this wiki’s entry on the Constitutional Commission of 1986 documents. (LawPhil — Proclamation No. 3, Wikipedia — Philippine Constitutional Commission of 1986)