Ganzon v Court of Appeals 


DOCTRINE: The suspension of an elective official for an unreasonable length of time may amount to
oppression or violation of right to due process.

FACTS:

A series of administrative complaints, ten in number, were filed before the Department of Local
Government against petitioner Mayor Rodolfo T. Ganzon by various city officials sometime in 1988 on
various charges, among them, abuse of authority, oppression, grave misconduct, etc. Finding probable
grounds, the respondent Secretary of the Department of Local Government Luis T. Santos issued 3
successive 60- day suspensions. The petitioner then instituted an action for prohibition against the
secretary in the RTC of Iloilo City where he succeeded in obtaining a writ of preliminary injunction. He
also instituted actions for prohibition before the Court of Appeals but were both dismissed. Thus, this
petition for review with the argument that the respondent Secretary is devoid, in any event, of any
authority to suspend and remove local officials as the 1987 Constitution no longer allows the President
to exercise said power.

ISSUE:
Whether or not the Secretary of Local Government (as the alter ego of the President) has the authority to
suspend and remove local officials.

RULING:
The Constitution did nothing more, and insofar as existing legislation authorizes the President (through
the Secretary of Local Government) to proceed against local officials administratively, the Constitution
contains no prohibition. The Chief Executive is not banned from exercising acts of disciplinary authority
because she did not exercise control powers, but because no law allowed her to exercise disciplinary
authority.

In those case that this Court denied the President the power (to suspend/remove) it was not because
that the President cannot exercise it on account of his limited power, but because the law lodged the
power elsewhere. But in those cases in which the law gave him the power, the Court, as in Ganzon v.
Kayanan, found little difficulty in sustaining him.

We reiterate that we are not precluding the President, through the Secretary of Interior from exercising a
legal power, yet we are of the opinion that the Secretary of interior is exercising that power oppressively,
and needless to say, with a grave abuse of discretion.

As we observed earlier, imposing 600 days of suspension which is not a remote possibility Mayor
Ganzon is to all intents and purposes, to make him spend the rest of his term in inactivity. It is also to
make, to all intents and purposes, his suspension permanent.