04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly that all appointments made by the outgoing President were ineffective. The Court stressed that its action, either upholding or nullifying the appointments made, was “more influenced by the doubtful character of the appointments themselves and not by the contention that the President had validly recalled them.”[93] The appointments in Merrera, Morales and Tajanglangit[94] were not considered “midnight” appointments although the appointees took their oath or assumed office near the end of the outgoing President’s term (or within the period covered by the presidential issuance). In these cases, the Court considered several factors — the need to fill the vacancies, the qualifications of the appointees, and the date of the appointments — in determining whether the appointment was an abuse of the appointing power of the outgoing President and must thus be struck down in deference to the newly elected President. In sum, before the 1987 Constitution when no express legal prohibition existed against appointments made by an outgoing President and out of respect for the separation of powers principle, the Court considered the validity of alleged “midnight” appointments on a case-to-case basis. b. The 1987 Constitution and the earlier laws on appointment ban after Aytona While the midnight appointments contemplated in Aytona were, by nature, strictly last-minute appointments, or were made after an outgoing President had lost his bid for reelection, statutory law after Aytona expanded the concept of a midnight appointment by extending the period when appointments could not be made within the period prior to the elections. Republic Act (RA) No. 6388,[95] as a rule, prohibited national and local appointing authorities “from appointing or hiring new employees” “during the period of fortyfive days before a regular election and thirty days before a special election.”[96] The statutory prohibition was reproduced in Section 178 (f) and (g) of Presidential Decree (PD) No. 1296.[97] Eventually, these prohibitions were substantially carried over into Batas Pambansa Blg. 881.[98] Thus, even prior to the 1987 Constitution, statutory law had already generally prohibited the appointment or hiring of a new employee within specific time frames broader than the midnight appointment period understood in Aytona. This broader statutory law concept of midnight appointments was carried over into the 1987 Constitution where the ban was a special one specifically directed only against the outgoing President. The prohibition covers appointments without any distinction on whether the appointee is a new hire or not, or whether the appointment would involve a transfer, a detail or other kinds of personnel movement.[99] Section 15, Article VII of the Constitution also provides its own period of effectivity of two months prior to the coming Presidential elections all the way to the end of the outgoing President’s term. While the prohibition contains an exception that is left for the outgoing President’s determination, his power of appointment under the exception is very much curtailed; the permitted appointment is limited only to temporary appointments in the executive branch. elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/60717 44/75