04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly the validity of their appointments are unmeritorious, measured under the terms of Section 15, Article VII of the Constitution and the valid portions of E.O. No. 2. Specifically, while I vote to grant part of the first relief the petitioners prayed for, I vote to deny their second and third requested reliefs. A. Preliminary consideration At the outset, I note that petitioners Villanueva and Rosquita did not appeal the CA’s ruling under Rule 45 of the Rules of Court, but instead filed a petition for certiorari under Rule 65 of these Rules. This procedural error warrants an outright dismissal of their petition. For the remedy of certiorari under Rule 65 to lie, an appeal or any plain, speedy, and adequate remedy should not be available to the aggrieved party. If appeal is available, certiorari will not prosper even if the cited ground is grave abuse of discretion.[59] In the present case, the remedy of appeal by certiorari under Rule 45 of the Rules of Court was clearly available to petitioners Villanueva and Rosquita since the CA decision was a final order that completely disposed of the proceeding before it.[60] The CA, in other words, fully complied with this Court’s January 31, 2012 Resolution to “resolve all pending matters and applications, and to decide the issues as if these [present] cases have been originally commenced [in the CA].”[61] Even if I were to consider the Rosquita/Villanueva petition to be a Rule 45 petition for review on certiorari, I would still maintain its denial because it was filed out of time. Under Section 2, Rule 45, the aggrieved party has a period of only fifteen (15) days from notice of the judgment or final order or resolution appealed from within which to appeal. Based on this rule, their petition should have been filed on October 2, 2013, not on October 7, 2013 or 5 calendars days after the period allowed for appeal. Notably, not even a hint of explanation accompanied this tardy appeal.[62] I am thus forced to conclude that the petition was filed under Rule 65 with the intent to make it a substitute for a Rule 45 appeal that had been lost for lapse of the period to file an appeal. A special civil action for certiorari is a limited form of review and is a last remedy allowed under strict requirements that Rosquita/Villanueva failed to observe.[63] To reiterate, the Court cannot allow a petition for certiorari to prosper when a party could appeal the judgment, but instead used a petition for certiorari in lieu of his appeal.[64] Moreover, read as a Rule 65 petition, Rosquita’s and Villanueva’s failure, without any valid explanation, to file a motion for reconsideration from the CA’s ruling warrants the outright dismissal of their petition. The prior filing of a motion for reconsideration is an indispensable condition before a certiorari petition can be used.[65] This failure is an added lapse that contributes to my resolve to recognize the petition’s deficiencies to the fullest. Of course, it is within this Court’s power to recognize, and the Court has in fact recognized exceptions to technical and procedural deficiencies based on the discretion given us by the Constitution under our constitutional rule-making elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/60717 39/75