04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly equitable rights. Yet it is doubtful if such equity might be successfully set up in the present situation, considering the rush conditional appointments, hurried maneuvers and other happenings detracting from that degree of good faith, morality and propriety which form the basic foundation of claims to equitable relief. The appointees, it might be argued, wittingly or unwittingly cooperated with the stratagem to beat the deadline, whatever the resultant consequences to the dignity and efficiency of the public service. Needless to say, there are instances wherein not only strict legality, but also fairness, justice and righteousness should be taken into account.[43] During the deliberations for the 1987 Constitution, then Constitutional Commissioner (now retired Supreme Court Chief Justice) Hilario G. Davide, Jr. referred to this Court’s ruling in Aytona and stated that his proposal seeks to prevent a President, whose term is about to end, from preempting his successor by appointing his own people to sensitive positions. MR. DAVIDE: The idea of the proposal is that about the end of the term of the President, he may prolong his rule indirectly by appointing people to these sensitive positions, like the commissions, the Ombudsman, the judiciary, so he could perpetuate himself in power even beyond his term of office; therefore foreclosing the right of his successor to make appointments to these positions. We should realize that the term of the President is six years and under what we had voted on, there is no reelection for him. Yet he can continue to rule the country through appointments made about the end of his term to these sensitive positions.[44] The 1986 Constitutional Commission put a definite period, or an empirical value, on Aytona’s intangible “stratagem to beat the deadline,” and also on the act of “preempting the President’s successor,” which shows a lack of “good faith, morality and propriety.” Subject to only one exception, appointments made during this period are thus automatically prohibited under the Constitution, regardless of the appointee’s qualifications or even of the President’s motives. The period for prohibited appointments covers two months before the elections until the end of the President’s term. The Constitution, with a specific exception, ended the President’s power to appoint “two months immediately before the next presidential elections.” For an appointment to be valid, it must be made outside of the prohibited period or, failing that, fall under the specified exception. The dissent insists that, during the prohibited period, an appointment should be viewed in its “narrow sense.” In its narrow sense, an appointment is not a process, but is only an “executive act that the President unequivocally exercises pursuant to his discretion.”[45] The dissent makes acceptance of the appointment inconsequential. The dissent holds that an appointment is void if the appointment is made before the ban but the transmittal and acceptance are made after the ban. However, the dissent holds that an appointment is valid, or “efficacious,” if the appointment and transmittal are made before the ban even if the acceptance is made after the ban. In short, the dissent allows an appointment to take effect during the ban, as long as the President signed and transmitted the appointment before the ban, even if the appointee never received the appointment paper before the ban and accepted the appointment only during the ban. elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/60717 12/75