Short answer. Yes. Under Article 143 of the Revised Penal Code, any person who, by force or fraud, prevents the meeting of Congress — or of its committees, the Constitutional Commissions, or a provincial board, city or municipal council — commits a crime, punishable by imprisonment or a fine, or both.
What the law says
any person who, by force or fraud, prevents the meeting of Congress or of any of its committees or subcommittees, Constitutional Commissions or committees or divisions thereof, or of any provincial board or city or municipal council or board
Revised Penal Code, Article 143 — Preventing Meetings Of Congress. Read the full provision →
What the law says
prisión correccional
Revised Penal Code, Article 143 — Preventing Meetings Of Congress. Read the full provision →
Blocking a legislative meeting is a crime
Article 143 protects the ability of representative bodies to convene. It penalizes any person who, by force or fraud, prevents the meeting of Congress or of any of its committees or subcommittees, Constitutional Commissions or committees or divisions thereof, or of any provincial board or city or municipal council or board. The offense is aimed at those who use force or fraud to stop these bodies from meeting. The list is broad: it covers not just the two houses of Congress but their committees, the Constitutional Commissions, and local legislative bodies down to the municipal council.
Force or fraud is the key element
The article requires a particular means: force or fraud. It is not enough that a meeting did not happen; the accused must have prevented it by force — physical compulsion or violence — or by fraud, some deceit that kept the body from convening. Ordinary lawful conduct that merely makes a meeting inconvenient is not covered. The wrong the law targets is the deliberate obstruction of a body's power to assemble and deliberate, achieved through one of these two unlawful methods. Without force or fraud, this particular article does not apply, whatever else the conduct might amount to.
Why the law protects these meetings
These bodies do the public's business by meeting and deliberating; preventing them from convening strikes at the working of representative government itself. That is why the article reaches from the national Congress all the way to local councils — each is a forum where elected or constitutional officers must be free to gather and act. On conviction, Article 143 imposes prisión correccional or a fine, or both. The peso range in the current text comes from Republic Act No. 10951 (2017); older reproductions still print the 1930 amount, so verify the version before quoting a figure.
What the article does not reach
Article 143 is about preventing a body from meeting at all; it does not, by itself, punish disruptive behavior once a meeting is underway, which other provisions address. It also does not turn every political maneuver that delays a session into a crime — the force-or-fraud requirement keeps its reach narrow. And it is concerned with the meeting of the body, not with the wisdom or outcome of what the body decides. The decisive questions are whether one of the listed bodies was prevented from meeting, and whether that was done by force or fraud.