Lorenzo Tanada and Diosdado Macapagal, petitioners, vs.

Mariano Jesus Cuenco, Francisco Delgado,

Alfred Cruz, Catalina Cayetano, Manuel Serapio, Placido Reyes, and Ferdinad Hipolito in his capacity as
cashier and disbursing officer, respondents

G.R. No. L-10520, February 28, 1957

EN BANC

Concepcion, J.:

FACTS:

Petitioners Lorenzo Tanada, senator and only member of the opposition party Citizen’s Party and
Diosdado Macapagal, senatorial candidate who lost in the November 1955 General election but was
contesting it before the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) pray that respondents Cuenco and Delgado, both
from Nacionalista Party (NP), be not allowed to hold/ exercise power in the Senate Electoral Tribunal that
is currently being occupied by them and that respondent Fernando Hipólito be restrained from paying the
salaries of respondents Alfredo Cruz, Catalina Cayetano, Manuel Serapio and Placido Reyes.

Each Electoral Tribunal is composed of nine (9) members: three (3) justices of the Supreme Court, no
more than three (3) senators from the majority party, and no more than three (3) senators from the
minority party. In this case, since Tanada is the only member of the minority, the other two SET members
that is supposed to be minority members, is filled in by two senators from the NP.

Petitioner Macapagal holds that the number of NP members within the SET may affect the decision(s)
that SET is yet to make for Senate Eectoral Case No. 4. Cuenco argued that the power to choose the
members of the SET is vested in the Senate alone and the remedy for Tañada and Macapagal was not to
raise the issue before judicial courts but rather to leave it before the bar of public opinion.

ISSUE: Whether or not the election of Senators Cuenco and Delgado as members of the Senate Electoral
Tribunal a political question.

RULING:

No. The term “political question” means a question of policy- “those questions which, under the
Constitution, are to be decided by the people in their sovereign capacity, or in regard to which full
discretionary authority has been delegated to the Legislature or executive branch of the Government.”
“Political question” issues are dependent upon the wisdom, not legality, of a particular measure.

In the present case, the Court is called upon to decide whether the election of Senators Cuenco and
Delgado as members of Senate Electoral Tribunal, by being nominated by Senator Cipriano Primicias,
member and spokesman of the majority party in the Senate, violates the constitutional mandate that (the
supposed two other) members of the SET shall be chosen upon nomination from the minority party in the
Senate, and hence, is null and void, and is NOT a political question thereof.