I. Overview: Direct Democracy in the 1987 Constitutional Design

Philippine constitutionalism is primarily representative: laws are enacted by elected legislatures and executed by elected and appointed officials. Still, the 1987 Constitution deliberately keeps direct-democratic “safety valves”—mechanisms where citizens can participate in lawmaking or constitutional change without going through the full ordinary legislative process.

The principal “direct democracy” devices in Philippine public law are:

People’s Initiative – the people propose a measure (a law, a local ordinance, or—under strict constitutional limits—an amendment to the Constitution).
Referendum – the people approve or reject an existing measure passed by a legislature (or, in local government, by a sanggunian).

(Separate but related devices include plebiscite and recall; these are often confused with referendum/initiative but operate differently and are grounded in different constitutional and statutory provisions.)

The constitutional instruction is explicit that Congress must provide a system for initiative and referendum, and the Constitution itself also recognizes a form of people’s initiative for constitutional amendments.

II. Constitutional Foundations

A. Initiative and Referendum on Laws (Article VI, Section 32)

The Constitution directs Congress to provide a system of:

initiative and referendum, as a means of directly proposing and enacting laws, or approving/rejecting any act or law (or part thereof) passed by Congress or a local legislative body.

This provision is not self-executing in the sense that it anticipates implementing legislation: Congress must define procedures, thresholds, verification, timelines, and election mechanics.

B. People’s Initiative for Constitutional Amendments (Article XVII, Section 2)

The Constitution also allows constitutional amendments to be proposed by the people through initiative, subject to express numerical and timing limits:

Petition threshold: at least twelve percent (12%) of the total number of registered voters.
Geographic distribution: every legislative district must be represented by at least three percent (3%) of the registered voters therein.
Timing restrictions: no amendment by initiative within five (5) years following ratification of the Constitution, and thereafter not more often than once every five (5) years.

Two doctrinal consequences follow immediately:

The people’s initiative route is constitutionally confined to amendments, not revisions.
Even for amendments, the mechanism must satisfy both the national threshold and the district distribution requirement.

III. Core Concepts and Definitions

A. People’s Initiative (General)

People’s initiative is the power of the electorate to propose legislation (or a constitutional amendment, within limits) by petition and, after compliance with legal requirements, to submit the proposal to a vote.

In Philippine practice, it is commonly discussed in three contexts:

Initiative on statutes (national laws)
Initiative on local legislation (ordinances/resolutions within local government competence)
Initiative on the Constitution (constitutional amendments only)

B. Referendum (General)

A referendum is the power of the electorate to approve or reject a law or measure already passed by a legislative body.

The classic distinction is:

Initiative: people start the measure.
Referendum: people review a measure already enacted/passed.

C. What These Are Not: Plebiscite and Recall

Because Philippine law frequently requires popular votes, confusion is common.

Plebiscite usually refers to constitutionally or statutorily required popular ratification for certain governmental acts (e.g., creation of provinces/cities, changes in local boundaries, and ratification of constitutional amendments/revisions proposed by Congress or a constitutional convention). A plebiscite is typically mandatory once legal prerequisites exist; it is not necessarily triggered by citizen petition in the same way as initiative/referendum.
Recall is a mechanism to remove local elective officials before the end of their term (a local accountability tool distinct from lawmaking).

IV. Implementing Statutes and the Regulatory Structure

A. Republic Act No. 6735 (The Initiative and Referendum Act)

Congress enacted RA 6735 to implement the constitutional mandate on initiative and referendum. It lays out general procedures for initiative and referendum, including petition requirements, signature thresholds (especially for national and local measures), and the conduct of the required election.

However, RA 6735’s adequacy—particularly as to constitutional initiative—has been a recurring constitutional litigation issue (discussed below).

B. Local Government Code (Republic Act No. 7160): Local Initiative and Referendum

The Local Government Code (LGC) contains a dedicated framework for local initiative and local referendum, reflecting the constitutional policy of local autonomy.

In operation, local initiative/referendum tends to be more practically available than constitutional initiative because the subject matter is narrower, the electorate is smaller, and the LGC provides a more direct local procedure.

C. COMELEC’s Administrative Role

The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) typically plays the central administrative role in:

receiving or processing petitions,
verifying signatures (directly or through local election offices),
determining compliance with form and content requirements,
setting the election date (where authorized by law),
supervising the campaign and balloting process,
proclaiming results.

But COMELEC’s authority is bounded: it cannot create substantive rules that effectively substitute for statutory requirements when the Constitution requires Congress to define the system.

V. Thresholds and Formal Requirements (Practical Legal Architecture)

A. Signature Thresholds (Conceptual)

There are two recurring threshold designs in Philippine initiative law:

A national or local percentage requirement (e.g., a percentage of registered voters in the entire polity concerned).
A geographic distribution requirement (to ensure the proposal is not purely regional).

For constitutional initiative, the Constitution itself supplies the numbers: 12% nationwide + 3% per legislative district.

For statutory and local initiatives/referenda, implementing law supplies the thresholds and details; these typically mirror the logic of “overall percentage + distribution,” but the exact numbers depend on whether the measure is national or local, and the size/classification of the local government unit.

B. “Full Text” Requirement and Petition Integrity

A major jurisprudential insistence in Philippine constitutional initiative litigation is that a petition must embody the complete, precise proposal that voters are asked to support—both at the signature-gathering stage and at the voting stage.

This is linked to two rule-of-law concerns:

Informed consent: signatories must know what they are signing for.
Anti-fraud: preventing “bait-and-switch” signature campaigns where the final text differs from what was circulated.

C. Single Subject, Appropriateness of Form, and Legislative Character

Initiative and referendum are typically confined to legislative measures (laws/ordinances) rather than:

appointments,
internal legislative housekeeping,
purely administrative or executive acts,
matters beyond the authority of the legislative body involved,
or measures that violate constitutional substantive limits (e.g., denial of due process/equal protection).

In short: the electorate cannot, through initiative, do what the relevant legislature itself cannot validly do.

VI. Constitutional Initiative: The Hard Doctrinal Problems

A. Amendment vs. Revision: The Gatekeeping Question

The Constitution authorizes initiative only for amendments, not revisions.

Philippine constitutional doctrine distinguishes the two conceptually:

Amendment: a change that is limited in scope—an adjustment, addition, deletion, or modification that does not fundamentally restructure the Constitution’s basic framework.
Revision: a more sweeping change that alters the basic plan of government, reconfigures fundamental powers, or makes extensive and interconnected alterations across the constitutional structure.

Because many political projects (especially “charter change”) are broad, attempts to use people’s initiative for constitutional change often trigger the argument that the proposal is in truth a revision, and thus not permissible via initiative.

B. Enabling Law Controversy: The RA 6735 Problem

A landmark doctrinal stance associated with constitutional initiative litigation is that the people’s initiative provision for constitutional amendments needs a sufficient implementing law. The Supreme Court, in major cases, has scrutinized whether RA 6735 provides the necessary details to operationalize Article XVII, Section 2.

In Santiago v. COMELEC (1997), the Court is widely understood to have held that RA 6735 was inadequate to implement constitutional initiative (even if it addressed initiative/referendum in other contexts). That ruling became a major obstacle to constitutional initiatives because it treated the system as lacking a complete enabling statute for constitutional amendments by initiative.

In Lambino v. COMELEC (2006), the Court again confronted an attempt at constitutional change via initiative and emphasized strict compliance requirements—particularly around what constitutes a valid initiative petition and whether the proposed change is within the allowable scope (amendment, not revision), and whether the petition genuinely presents the full text to signatories.

The combined practical effect of the jurisprudence is that constitutional initiative is legally far more constrained than the popular imagination suggests—both because of the amendment/revision boundary and because of stringent procedural validity requirements.

C. “Directly Proposed”: No Delegation, No Placeholder Petition

The Constitution’s phrase “proposed by the people through initiative” has been read to require that the people’s petition must itself propose the amendment, not merely authorize another body or process to craft the amendment later.

This matters because a petition that essentially says “let us change the Constitution; details to follow” is not an initiative in the constitutional sense—it is a delegation, not a direct proposal.

VII. Statutory Initiative and Referendum: How They Work in Practice

A. National Initiative on Statutes

In a typical national initiative framework:

Drafting of the proposed law (complete text).
Preparation of the petition with required statements and signatory details.
Signature gathering meeting statutory thresholds and distribution requirements.
Filing and verification of signatures.
COMELEC action on sufficiency and scheduling of the vote (as authorized).
Information campaign and contestation (supporters and opponents).
Election (initiative vote) and proclamation of results.

A successful initiative vote enacts the proposed statute, subject still to constitutional review (the Supreme Court can invalidate an initiative-enacted law if it violates the Constitution).

B. National Referendum on Statutes

For referendum, the target is an existing law (or a specified portion). The operational idea is:

a petition triggers a vote to approve or reject the targeted law (or part).

As with initiative, the referendum result is subject to constitutional limitations: neither Congress nor the electorate can validate a law that violates the Constitution.

C. Local Initiative and Local Referendum (Under the LGC)

Local initiative and referendum focus on ordinances and local legislative measures within the local government’s delegated powers.

Typical local flow:

Proposed ordinance (initiative) or targeted ordinance (referendum).
Petition signed by required percentage of local registered voters.
Submission to local election officials/COMELEC processes for verification.
Local vote within the LGU concerned.
Effectivity depending on vote outcome and procedural rules.

Local initiative/referendum is still bounded by:

the Constitution,
national statutes,
and the doctrine that local ordinances cannot contravene national law or exceed delegated local powers.

VIII. Judicial Review and Litigation Pathways

A. What Gets Litigated

Initiative and referendum disputes commonly raise:

Sufficiency of the petition (form, content, full text, proper phrasing, required disclosures).
Signature validity (fraud, duplication, non-registered signers, improper authentication).
Threshold compliance (percentage and geographic distribution).
Subject-matter limits (is it legislative? within power? constitutional constraints?).
Timing restrictions (constitutional five-year limits for constitutional initiative; statutory timing limits for statutory/local processes).
Amendment vs revision (for constitutional initiatives).

B. Standards of Review (Practical)

Courts generally treat initiative/referendum requirements as mandatory, not merely directory, because the process bypasses ordinary representative safeguards. The more “constitutional” the subject (especially attempts to amend the Constitution), the more exacting the scrutiny tends to be.

IX. Substantive Limits: What the People Cannot Do Through Initiative/Referendum

Even if procedural rules are followed, initiative/referendum measures remain constrained by superior law.

A. Constitutional Supremacy

Neither a popularly initiated statute nor a referendum-approved statute can:

violate the Bill of Rights,
impair separation of powers in a constitutionally forbidden way,
undermine constitutionally protected institutions (without a valid constitutional amendment),
or contravene explicit constitutional commands.

B. Ultra Vires Limits for Local Measures

Local initiative cannot validly enact an ordinance that:

is beyond local legislative power,
conflicts with national law,
or violates constitutional rights.

X. Policy Rationale and Critiques

A. Why the System Exists

Democratic correction: gives citizens a direct tool when legislatures are unresponsive.
Participation: deepens civic engagement.
Accountability pressure: encourages legislatures to be attentive to public sentiment.

B. Why the System Is Strict

Risk of manipulation: signature drives can be engineered by elite interests.
Information deficits: complex legal changes can be reduced to slogans.
Minority rights: direct votes can threaten rights without careful institutional safeguards.
Institutional stability: constitutional change via mass petition is structurally destabilizing if not tightly regulated.

Philippine jurisprudence’s strictness—especially for constitutional initiative—can be understood as a judicial attempt to preserve constitutional stability and prevent procedural shortcuts that mask sweeping changes.

XI. Practical Notes for Legal Analysis and Bar-Style Issue Spotting

When faced with an initiative/referendum problem, a structured legal analysis typically asks:

Identify the mechanism: initiative or referendum? national or local? constitutional or statutory?
Check the legal basis: Constitution provision + enabling statute/LGC + COMELEC authority.
Verify thresholds: required percentage and distribution, and whether these are met.
Validate petition integrity: full text? informed consent? proper form?
Check timing restrictions: constitutional five-year rule (for constitutional initiative) and any statutory timing limits.
Subject-matter competence: legislative character and authority of the polity involved.
Substantive constitutionality: does the proposal violate constitutional limits?
Remedy and forum: COMELEC action, then judicial review typically via petitions invoking the Supreme Court’s power to review COMELEC for grave abuse of discretion.

XII. Key Takeaways

Initiative proposes; referendum disposes (approves/rejects) of an existing measure.
The Constitution recognizes initiative/referendum on laws and recognizes people’s initiative for constitutional amendments, but only under strict numerical and timing limits.
Philippine constitutional litigation has made constitutional initiative exceptionally demanding, with major doctrinal barriers centered on (1) the need for a sufficient enabling law, (2) full-text/informed consent requirements, and (3) the amendment vs revision boundary.
Local initiative and referendum are conceptually clearer and more operationally accessible under the Local Government Code, but remain bounded by constitutional supremacy and the limits of local legislative power.