Short answer. Yes. Article 148 imposes prisión correccional in its medium and maximum periods, plus a fine up to ₱200,000, when the assault is committed with a weapon, when the offender is a public officer or employee, or when the offender lays hands on a person in authority. Otherwise, the penalty drops to the minimum period and a smaller fine.
What the law says
shall suffer the penalty of prisión correccional in its medium and maximum periods and a fine not exceeding Two hundred thousand pesos (₱200,000), when the assault is committed with a weapon or when the offender is a public officer or employee, or when the offender lays hands upon a person in authority
Revised Penal Code, Article 148 — Direct Assault On Authority. Read the full provision →
What counts as direct assault under Article 148
Article 148 covers two situations. The first is employing force or intimidation, without an actual public uprising, to accomplish any of the purposes that define rebellion or sedition. The second, more common situation is attacking, using force against, seriously intimidating, or resisting a person in authority or that person's agent while the official is performing official duties, or on the occasion of that performance. Either version is treated as direct assault, and both carry the same two-tier penalty structure that follows.
What triggers the heavier penalty
Three circumstances push the penalty up to prisión correccional in its medium and maximum periods, with a fine reaching ₱200,000: the assault was committed with a weapon, the offender is a public officer or employee, or the offender laid hands on a person in authority. Any one of the three is enough — they do not need to occur together. Notably, the text ties the lays-hands circumstance specifically to a person in authority, not merely to an agent of one, so that particular trigger is narrower than the assault provision as a whole.
The lighter penalty when none of those apply
If none of the three aggravating circumstances is present, the offender instead faces prisión correccional in its minimum period and a fine not exceeding ₱100,000. This still qualifies as direct assault — it still involves attacking, forcing, intimidating, or resisting a person in authority or an agent in the performance of duty — but without a weapon, without public-officer status on the offender's part, and without hands laid on a person in authority, the law treats it as the less aggravated form.
Why the peso figures look different in older sources
The fine amounts above — up to ₱200,000 for the aggravated form, up to ₱100,000 for the ordinary form — reflect Republic Act No. 10951 (2017), which revised the fines and property-based values across the Revised Penal Code. Older reproductions of the Code, including many still circulating online, print the original 1930 figures instead. If a source quotes a different, much smaller fine for direct assault, it is almost certainly working from the pre-2017 text rather than the amounts currently in force.