Case Digest (G.R. No. 176579)
Facts:
Wilson P. Gamboa v. Finance Secretary Margarito B. Teves, et al., G.R. No. 176579, June 28, 2011, Supreme Court En Banc, Carpio, J., writing for the Court. Petitioner Wilson P. Gamboa, a PLDT stockholder, filed an original petition for prohibition, injunction, declaratory relief and annulment of the sale of 111,415 shares of Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corporation (PTIC) — shares the Court had earlier declared to belong to the Republic — which the Inter‑Agency Privatization Council (IPC) sold to Metro Pacific Assets Holdings, Inc. (MPAH), an affiliate of First Pacific Company Limited. The sale grew out of a December 8, 2006 public bidding won by Parallax and was completed on February 28, 2007 after First Pacific (through MPAH) exercised a matching right; petitioner filed the instant petition the same day the sale was consummated.The petition challenged, among other things, that the sale would increase foreign voting control of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) above constitutional limits; petitioner asserted that the dispositive question was whether the word “capital” in Section 11, Article XII of the 1987 Constitution refers only to voting/common shares or to total outstanding capital stock (common plus non‑voting preferred). Public respondents (Finance Secretary Teves, Undersecretary Sevilla, PCGG Commissioner Abcede) and private respondents (PLDT officers and related actors) disputed procedural posture and due process but did not seriously contest the factual ownership distribution asserted by petitioner; PLDT’s submissions showed most preferred shares are non‑voting and largely Filipino‑held, while foreigners hold a majority of common/voting shares.
On August 13, 2007, Pablito V. Sanidad and Arno V. Sanidad sought and were granted leave to intervene. The Court noted that only prohibition properly lies in its original jurisdiction (concurrent with lower courts), that the sale had already been consummated (making prohibition moot), and that the purely legal, threshold question of the meaning of “capital” had nationwide significance. The Court therefore treated the petition for declaratory relief as one for mandamus and proceeded to resolve the legal is...(Pro-only)
Issues:
- Whether the petition is proper to be entertained by this Court (procedural threshold: standing, jurisdiction, and whether a petition for declaratory relief may be treated as one for mandamus).
- Whether the term “capital” in Section 11, Article XII of the 1987 Constitution refers only to shares entitled to vote in the election of directors (common/voting shares) or to the total outstanding capital stock (common...(Pro-only)
Ruling:
- (Pro-only)
Ratio:
- (Pro-only)
Doctrine:
- (Pro-only)