Guihulngan, Negros Oriental
Encyclopedia
Guihulngan is a city
Cities of the Philippines
A city is a tier of local government in the Philippines. All Philippine cities are chartered cities, whose existence as corporate and administrative entities is governed by their own specific charters in addition to the Local Government Code of 1991, which specifies the administrative structure...
in the province of Negros Oriental, Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
.
Barangays
Guihulngan is politically subdivided into 33 barangayBarangay
A barangay is the smallest administrative division in the Philippines and is the native Filipino term for a village, district or ward...
s.
|
|
|
Cityhood
Guihulngan was already the largest municipality in Negros Oriental when, in July of 2007, a popular referendumReferendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
was passed declaring it a city.
15 months later, however, Guihulngan lost its cityhood, along with 15 other cities. The Supreme Court of the Philippines had granted a petition
Petition
A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer....
filed by the League of Cities of the Philippines
League of Cities of the Philippines
The League of Cities of the Philippines - or more simply the League of Cities or LCP - is a formal organization of all the cities in the Philippines...
, declaring the cityhood law (RA 9409), which had allowed the town to acquire its city status, unconstitutional. The said cities, the court ruled, had not meet the requirements for cityhood.SC Public Information Office |date=November 18, 2008 |accessdate=July 28, 2009}}
More than a year later, on December 22, 2009, acting on the appeal of the so-called "League of 16 Cities" (of which Guihulngan is a part of), the Supreme Court reversed its earlier ruling as it ruled that "at the end of the day, the passage of the amendatory law (regarding the criteria for cityhood as set by Congress) is no different from the enactment of a law, i.e., the cityhood laws specifically exempting a particular political subdivision from the criteria earlier mentioned. Congress, in enacting the exempting law/s, effectively decreased the already codified indicators." As such, the cityhood status of Guihulngan is effectively restored.
But on August 24, 2010, in a 16-page resolution, the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the Philippines
The Supreme Court of the Philippines is the Philippines' highest judicial court, as well as the court of last resort. The court consists of 14 Associate Justices and 1 Chief Justice...
reinstated its November 18, 2008 decision striking down the Cityhood laws making Guihulngan a municipality again.
Voting 7-6, with two justices not taking part, the SC reinstated its Nov. 18, 2008 decision declaring as unconstitutional the Republic Acts (RAs) converting 16 municipalities into cities.
In February 15, 2011 the Supreme Court upheld its decision for the 3rd time making Guihulngan a city again.