04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly Thus, as worded, Section 15, Article VII (both its rule and exception) is a clear limitation on the appointing power of the outgoing President.[100] c. The status of Presidential midnight appointments under the 1987 Constitution and the CA’s defective treatment of midnight appointments By providing for a specific provision especially applicable only to the outgoing President (a provision entirely absent in the 1935 Constitution when the Aytona ruling took place and in the 1973 Constitution) under terms uniquely directed at his office, the Constitution apparently sought to limit any judicial fact-finding determination of the validity of the appointment in the manner done in Aytona. Had the intent been otherwise, there would have been no need to provide for a specific period for the operation of the ban; the framers of the Constitution would have left things as they had been. In other words, by the express terms of Section 15, Article VII, the Constitution fixed the period covered by the appointment ban precisely to avoid the necessity of making further inquiries on whether the appointments were made with “undue haste, hurried maneuvers, [or] for partisan reasons, [or otherwise] not in accordance with good faith” – issues that are largely factual in nature. The fixed period too inevitably established the presumption that “appointments” made outside this two-month period have been made in the regular discharge of duties and hence should enjoy the presumption of regularity or validity.[101] In this sense, the issue of – Whether the appointments of the petitioners and intervenors were made with undue haste, hurried maneuvers, for partisan reasons, and not in accordance with good faith, in our January 31, 2012 Resolution largely becomes a non-issue. The CA’s failure to resolve these matters is consequently not fatal.[102] Thus, based on these considerations of presidential power and its limits, I find it completely unnecessary for the CA to qualify its ruling upholding E.O. No. 2 by stating that “not all midnight appointments are invalid.” If appointments were indeed made within the prohibited period, then they suffer from an irremediable infirmity. On the other hand, if they were issued outside the prohibited period, then they fall outside the ambit of Section 15, Article VII. Notably, the CA used wrong considerations and cited inapplicable cases that led it to erroneously qualify its ruling. The CA cited cases involving appointments made after the elections by an outgoing local chief executive, not by the President. In particular, in the CA’s cited Nazareno v. City of Dumaguete,[103] the Court upheld the Civil Service Commission’s (CSC’s) issuance that generally prohibited outgoing local chief executives from exercising their appointing power unless certain requirements, evidencing regularity of the appointment, are observed.[104] In Sales v. Carreon,[105] the Court supported the CSC’s nullification of the appointments elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/60717 45/75