Source: Philippine Star
By Evelyn Macairan (The Philippine Star) Updated March 27, 2010 12:00 AM
MANILA, Philippines - President Arroyo drew flak yesterday for her recent frenzy of appointments and surprise dismissals, which were done barely two months before the end of her term in June.
Bangon Pilipinas presidential candidate Eddie Villanueva said Mrs. Arroyo committed serious injustice when she removed some officials and replaced them with favored friends and supporters.
Liberal Party presidential candidate Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, for his part, vowed to void the midnight appointments made by President Arroyo, saying they were blatant violations of the Constitution.
“That is an injustice done to the people who were replaced. Why do they need to be replaced suddenly and without notice? Obviously, this is for political interest,” Villanueva told The STAR editors and reporters.
He said even presidential appointees deserve due process. “This is a violation of their basic human rights. This is unconstitutional.”
He suggested that dismissed officials file a complaint, even only for record purposes.
Villanueva said he is prepared to help dismissed officials achieve justice, especially if he is elected president.
One of those unceremoniously removed was Ambassador to Germany Delia Domingo-Albert who learned of her misfortune on the day she was given the Most Outstanding Filipino Woman in Global Diplomacy award by Mrs. Arroyo in Malacañang last week.
The awarding was in celebration of International Women’s Month in March.
The President named 87-year-old taipan Alfonso Yuchengco as her replacement.
Aquino said Mrs. Arroyo’s disregard for the constitutional ban on midnight appointments was obviously a result of the Supreme Court decision allowing her to appoint the next chief justice of the Supreme Court.
He said Article VII Section 15 of the Constitution allows an elected president to revoke questionable or temporary appointments by his predecessor.
“It’s supposed to be prohibited but the (SC) allowed it in the case of the chief justice. Now we have appointments left and right. Based on the spirit of the law on prohibition, it’s difficult to understand why she can do this,” Aquino told reporters in Valenzuela City during the proclamation of his girlfriend, Councilor Shalani Soledad, who is running for re-election.
“There is an SC decision that says the ban applies only to executive positions. But the problem is, all the appointments were for executive positions. So will the SC again rule that that is okay? For me, it’s not,” he said.
LP senatorial bet Franklin Drilon said Mrs. Arroyo’s rash of appointments could be voided in the same way her father, President Diosdado Macapagal, trashed the midnight appointments of his predecessor President Carlos Garcia in 1963.
“The shoe is on the daughter’s foot,” Drilon said, calling Mrs. Arroyo’s actions a “total disregard for decency.”
Sen. Francis Pangilinan, LP campaign manager, said the party would ask the Senate to investigate the appointments upon the resumption of session.
“We are totally appalled by the shameless abuse of authority,” Pangilinan said. “We will make sure that the Senate of the 15th Congress will look into these bogus and illegal appointments and that the guilty parties will be held accountable for their acts,” he added. “We warn the appointees that they will not be spared from a Senate investigation.”
“She has thrown prudence out the window and seems to taunt the people with impunity,” Rep. Ruffy Biazon, another LP senatorial bet, said.
“President Arroyo’s brazen abuse of her appointing powers in the twilight of her term only serves to further erode our institutions and deepen the public distrust and disgust towards her,” former Bukidnon Rep. Neric Acosta, an LP senatorial candidate, said.
“With 96 days left in her term, it baffles the mind as to why the President is still working overtime in appointing outsiders to key government posts, when there is a deep bench of career officials ready to step up to the plate,” former senator Ralph Recto said.
“Instead of political appointees, President Arroyo should have named career officials to high government posts, a gracious move that would have kicked off a seamless transfer of power to the next administration,” Recto, also an LP senatorial candidate and Mrs. Arroyo’s former chief economist, said.
“If appointments in the last two minutes can’t be avoided, then it should be given to the career workhorses in an agency,” he said.
“This latest wave of midnight appointments sends shockwaves to our civil and foreign service,” Nacionalista Party senatorial candidate Susan Ople said.
“It also disregards proper protocols in the designation of new ambassadors and heads of agencies,” said Ople, a former labor undersecretary.
Close friends
President Arroyo has not only been replacing officials and entire boards despite the constitutional ban on midnight appointments. She has also been appointing friends and allies to jobs that assure them of security of tenure.
The STAR learned yesterday that Mrs. Arroyo has named her classmate and aerobics instructor Cynthia Carreon as head of the Tourism Promotions Board and Mark Lapid as chief operating officer of the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority.
A new law, the Tourism Act of 2009, created the two agencies and gave the appointees security of tenure.
Carreon and Lapid have a fixed term of six years, which means they cannot be removed by Mrs. Arroyo’s successor unless he forces them to resign.
Lapid, son of administration Sen. Lito Lapid, was head of the defunct Philippine Tourism Authority.
The two agencies will have hundreds of millions in internally generated funds, including travel tax receipts, which they can keep and dispense without much intervention from Malacañang.
Earlier, former Manila International Airport Authority general manager Alfonso Cusi was named head of another newly created agency, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).
Cusi’s new agency will have billions in funds for new airports and other airport-related projects like runway and terminal expansion or rehabilitation.
In fact, in preparing the 2010 national budget, Malacañang transferred at least P6 billion in airport project funds from the Department of Transportation and Communications to CAAP.
Lawmakers have created CAAP and other autonomous agencies so they would have easier access to funds for projects in their districts.
For one, these new legislative creations are assured of steady incomes since they have specific funding sources like the travel tax in the case of Carreon’s and Lapid’s offices, and the airport tax in the case of Cusi’s agency. The Department of Budget and Management, on the other hand, depends on tax revenues, which are apportioned among government agencies.
Nothing irregular
Malacañang, meanwhile, was unperturbed by the avalanche of denunciations.
And as it tried to parry criticism, Press Secretary Crispulo Icban announced the appointment of Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. president and chief executive officer Jose Ibazeta as officer-in-charge of the Department of Energy following the resignation of Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes, who accepted the nomination of party-list group 1-Utak.
Icban, however, sought to preempt any possible controversy over Ibazeta’s appointment, saying the post was only as OIC. The Constitution prohibits a president or an acting president to make appointments two months before the next presidential elections and up to the end of his or her term, except “temporary appointments to executive positions when continued vacancies therein will prejudice public service or endanger public safety.” In Mrs. Arroyo’s case, the ban started on March 10.
“What we’re saying is their appointments are being announced,” Icban told The STAR over the phone. He admitted that he was not aware of the dates of the latest movements in the official family.
The appointments of at least 15 officials, including the entire boards of the National Museum and the National Historical Institute, were only made known to the public early this week.
Deputy presidential spokesperson Charito Planas said the appointments were made before March 10.
“That (to appoint) is the prerogative of the President. She knows the capability of the person that she appoints and we cannot keep on saying maybe it’s (appointment papers) antedated,” she said.
“Again you have to show proof that it’s antedated,” Planas told a news briefing.
“So there is no prohibition committed, there was nothing illegal but the appointments were made before March 10,” she said.
Deputy presidential spokesman Gary Olivar pointed out that most of the appointments were not for critical positions. But he could not explain why Mrs. Arroyo rushed them.
“These are being done for the benefit of the government, especially in positions that she wants to make sure there are good people to carry on her agenda,” Olivar said.
Executive Secretary Leandro Mendoza, whose office usually processes appointments, could not be reached for comment. – With Aurea Calica, Delon Porcalla, Jess Diaz, Christina Mendez, Pia Lee-Brago
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