04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly President shall not make appointments, except temporary appointments to executive positions when continued vacancies therein will prejudice public service or endanger public safety. (emphasis supplied) This express wording leads us away from an interpretation of the provision as a process that would involve the appointee and his or her acts within the scope of the appointment ban. For one, Section 15, Article VII of the 1987 Constitution is directed only against an outgoing President and against no other. By providing that the President shall not make appointments within the specified period, the Constitution could not have barred the President from doing things that are not within his power to accomplish as appointing authority, such as the acts required or expected of the appointee. Note that the appointee who is at the receiving end of the appointment – if indeed the term “appointment” is meant as a process - is not even mentioned or even alluded to in Section 15, Article VII. Had the original intent of the framers been to include him, they would have simply “prohibited an appointee from accepting a Presidential appointment commencing two months before the next Presidential Election,” which already presupposes a previous valid appointment by the President. From this perspective, the objective of the provision is to limit the President’s appointing power alone, by prohibiting him from making appointments within a certain period; the intent is not to curtail the entire appointment process. As a limitation solely applicable to the President’s power of appointment, appointment under this provision largely assumes the character of an executive act that does not concern the appointee at all.[119] In their interpretation, the respondents insist that the acceptance and assumption of office by the appointee must also be accomplished before the ban sets in. They reason out that these acts are necessary for the completion and effectivity of an appointment; otherwise, “it would be useless to prohibit an incomplete and ineffective appointment.”[120] Notably, the ponencia supports this interpretation. With due respect, I believe that the ponencia’s and the respondents’ interpretation merely highlights the word “appointment” in Section 15 but ignores the totality of the provision and the language it is couched in. There is simply nothing in the language of Section 15, Article VII that supports the respondents’ plea for the Court to view “appointment” as a process. As will be discussed in detail below, even the supposed “uselessness” of prohibiting an “ineffective appointment” has no legal basis. I especially note in examining and construing Section 15, Article VII that what the petitioners in the present case challenge is the very authority of an outgoing President to exercise his appointing power based on a specific constitutional provision that makes the date of the making of appointment the focal point of the prohibition. These unique factual and legal aspects of the case suffice to reject the respondents’ reliance on cases whose factual and legal settings are completely at odds with the present case.[121] For the same reason, the petitioners, too, cannot simply rely on In Re: Seniority elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/60717 49/75