CA reaffirms legality of Aquino EO vs midnight appointments

The Court of Appeals has upheld anew the constitutionality of President Aquino's executive order nullifying so-called "midnight appointments" made by his predecessor – former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo – during the election ban in 2010.

 

In a decision penned by Associate Justice Noel Tijam, the CA's Former Eighth Division ruled that the appointment of Jose Sonny Matula as commissioner of the Social Security Commission (SSC) was considered a "midnight appointment."

 

The CA said Matula's appointment was a “void appointment [and] confers no rights whatsoever ... [the] removal from office following the revocation of Matula’s appointment was necessarily in order."

 

The appeals court said no constitutional violation was made when the appointment of Matula as SSC commissioner was revoked through Aquino's Executive Order Number 2. “The clear intent behind the ban on making midnight appointments” has been established, said the court.

 

Matula was appointed by Mrs. Arroyo as SSC Acting Commissioner on Sept. 21, 2006. He was later named commissioner representing workers on March 5, 2010, just six days before the constitutional ban on midnight appointments for the national elections on May 10, 2010 took effect.

 

But since Matula only took his oath of office on April 14, Matula was considered as a midnight appointee under EO2.

Signed on July 30, 2010, EO 2 ordered the removal of all midnight appointments made by the previous administration for violating the 60-day ban on presidential appointments before a national election.

 

Under Article VII, Section 15 of the 1987 Constitution, the President is barred from making appointments two months immediately before the next presidential elections and up to the end of his or her term.

 

In August last year, the same appeals court division, in separate resolutions, had already junked a number of petitions also contesting Aquino's EO2.

 

The petitioners whose petitions were junked were:

 

 

"The Constitution imposes a prohibition on the part of the President to make midnight appointments because during the transition period, he is no more than a mere ‘care taker’ who must not do anything that would undermine the policies of the succeeding President," the CA said.

 

"The purpose is also to eradicate the possible abuse of Presidential prerogatives of appointment for partisan purposes thereby preventing the incoming President from choosing the persons whom he sees fit to aid him in promoting his policies and running his administration," it added.

 

A sixth petition, by National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF) commissioner and secretary Chief Bai Omera Dianalan-Lucman, meanwhile, was favored by the appeals court, saying the petitioner should be reinstated to government office because she was not covered by the election ban.

 

The petitioners originally questioned the legality of EO 2 before the Supreme Court, but the high court remanded it to the CA. — RSJ, GMA News