The Awesome Appointive Power of the President of the Philippines

The power of appointment has traditionally been recognized as executive in nature and is vested by the Constitution in the President of the Philippines under Article VII Section 16.  The legislature may not interfere with the exercise of this executive power except in those instances when the Constitution expressly allows it to interfere (Pimentel et al. vs.  Ermita et al., G.R. No. 164978, En Banc, October 13, 2005).

In Sarmiento III v. Mison, 156 SCRA 149, the President can appoint four groups of officers:  (a)  heads of the executive departments, ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, or officers of the armed forces from the rank of colonel or naval captain, and other officers whose appointments are vested in him in this Constitution;  (b) all other officers of the Government whose appointments are not otherwise provided for by law; (c) those whom the President may be authorized by law to appoint; (d) officers lower in rank whose appointments Congress may by law vest in the President alone.    Only those covered under the first group of officers require confirmation by the Commission on Appointments, while the other group of officers do not need confirmation. 

Hence, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Customs and the Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights (Bautista v. Salonga, 172 SCRA 160, April 13, 1989) are not covered under the first group of officers, hence do not need confirmation by the Commission on Appointments.  

As a rule the President seeks to appoint his/her allies to important positions in the executive branch and in agencies, courts, and other nominally independent bodies.   In the Philippines, the President has considerable influence over appointments under the 1987 Constitution.  Only two institutions limit the President's power to appoint: Congress, through  the Commission on Appointments (COA), and the seven-member Judicial and Bar Council (JBC).       As held in Pimentel et al. vs.  Ermita et al., G.R. No. 164978, En Banc, October 13, 2005, the President can also make a temporary appointments to fill an office for a limited time until the appointment of a permanent occupant to the office.  This broad interpretation of the President's appointment power limits the Commission on Appointments from acting as a meaningful check on the President. 

            Under the 1987 Constitution, the President appoints officials who are intended to check the use of his/her appointing authority such as the members of the Supreme Court, the Office of the Ombudsman, and the Civil Service Commission.      This by itself creates a clout of influence by the President to these presidential appointees.    

Political appointments permeate the civil service.  The President directly appoints 3,500 third-level officers and another 6,500 lesser officials that are not reviewed by the Commission on Appointments.  This is now the condition where the president appoints more people throughout the bureaucracy – to the point where the President of the Philippines has more appointments to make than the president of the United States – some 10,000 compared to 9,000. 

Reference:

Rood, S. (2012). “Have Philippine Presidents Overcome the Governance Impact of the ‘Hollywood Years?’”  The Asia Foundation