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the
petitioner therein were the same. To dismiss the complaint in E.B. Marcha
would have brought needless delay in the settlement of the matter since
the PPA would have to refile the case on the same claim already litigated
upon. Such is not the case here since to allow the government to sue
herein enables it to raise the issue of imprescriptibility, a claim which is
not available to the BCDA. The rule that prescription does not run against
the State does not apply to corporations or artificial bodies created by the
State for special purposes, it being said that when the title of the Republic
has been divested, its grantees, although artificial bodies of its own
creation, are in the same category as ordinary persons. By raising the
claim of imprescriptibility, a claim which cannot be raised by the BCDA,
the Government not only assists the BCDA, as it did in E.B. Marcha, it even
supplants the latter, a course of action proscribed by said case.
Moreover, to recognize the Government as a proper party to sue in
this case would set a bad precedent as it would allow the Republic to
prosecute, on behalf of government-owned or controlled corporations,
causes of action which have already prescribed, on the pretext that the
Government is the real party in interest against whom prescription does
not run, said corporations having been created merely as agents for the
realization of government programs.
It should also be noted that petitioner is unquestionably a buyer in
good faith and for value, having acquired the property in 1963, or 5 years
after the issuance of the original certificate of title, as a third transferee.
If only not to do violence and to give some measure of respect to the
Torrens System, petitioner must be afforded some measure of protection.
(Shipside Incorporated v. Court of Appeals, 352 SCRA 334, Feb.
20, 2001, 3rd Div. [Melo])
an
Held: The Office of the Solicitor General likewise argues that the
questioned administrative circular is not among those requiring
publication contemplated by Tanada v. Tuvera as it is addressed only to a
specific group of persons and not to the general public.
Again, there is no merit in this argument.
The fact that the said circular is addressed only to a specified
group, namely private employment agencies or authority holders, does
not take it away from the ambit of our ruling in Tanada v. Tuvera. In the
case of Phil. Association of Service Exporters v. Torres, the administrative
circulars questioned therein were addressed to an even smaller group,
namely Philippine and Hong Kong agencies engaged in the recruitment of
workers for Hong Kong, and still the Court ruled therein that, for lack of
proper publication, the said circulars may not be enforced or
implemented.
It is quite evident from the tenor of the language of the law that the
existence of appropriations and the availability of funds are indispensable
pre-requisites to or conditions sine qua non for the execution of
government contracts. The obvious intent is to impose such conditions as
a priori requisites to the validity of the proposed contract. Using this as
our premise, we cannot accede to PHOTOKINAs contention that there is
already a perfected contract. While we held in Metropolitan Manila
Development Authority v. Jancom Environmental Corporation that the
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only P1.2 Billion and, thus, within the certified available funds, the same
covers only Phase I of the VRIS Project, i.e., the issuance of identification
cards for only 1,000,000 voters in specified areas.
In effect, the
implementation of the VRIS Project will be segmented or chopped into
several phases.
Not only is such arrangement disallowed by our
budgetary laws and practices, it is also disadvantageous to the COMELEC
because of the uncertainty that will loom over its modernization project
for an indefinite period of time. Should Congress fail to appropriate the
amount necessary for the completion of the entire project, what good will
the accomplished Phase I serve? As expected, the project failed to sell
with the Department of Budget and Management.
Thus, Secretary
Benjamin Diokno, per his letter of December 1, 2000, declined the
COMELECs request for the issuance of the Notice of Cash Availability
(NCA) and a multi-year obligatory authority to assume payment of the
total VRIS Project for lack of legal basis. Corollarily, under Section 33 of
R.A. No. 8760, no agency shall enter into a multi-year contract without a
multi-year obligational authority, thus:
SECTION 33. Contracting Multi-Year Projects. In the
implementation of multi-year projects, no agency shall enter into a multiyear contract without a multi-year Obligational Authority issued by the
Department of Budget and Management for the purpose. Notwithstanding
the issuance of the multi-year Obligational Authority, the obligation to be
incurred in any given calendar year, shall in no case exceed the amount
programmed for implementation during said calendar year.
Petitioners are justified in refusing to formalize the contract with
PHOTOKINA. Prudence dictated them not to enter into a contract not
backed up by sufficient appropriation and available funds. Definitely, to
act otherwise would be a futile exercise for the contract would inevitably
suffer the vice of nullity. x x x
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cite for contempt for violations thereof in accordance with the Rules of
Court. Accordingly, the CHR acted within its authority in providing in its
revised rules, its power to cite or hold any person in direct or indirect
contempt, and to impose the appropriate penalties in accordance with the
procedure and sanctions provided for in the Rules of Court. That power to
cite for contempt, however, should be understood to apply only to
violations of its adopted operational guidelines and rules of procedure
essential to carry out its investigatorial powers. To exemplify, the power
to cite for contempt could be exercised against persons who refuse to
cooperate with the said body, or who unduly withhold relevant
information, or who decline to honor summons, and the like, in pursuing
its investigative work. The order to desist (a semantic interplay for a
restraining order) in the instance before us, however, is not investigatorial
in character but prescinds from an adjudicative power that it does not
possess. x x x (Simon, Jr. v. Commission on Human Rights, 229
SCRA 117, 134, Jan. 5, 1994, En Banc [Vitug, J.])