Review of CA rules sought

MANILA, Philippines - Deputy Minority Leader Vicente Sotto III has called for a review of the rules of the Commission on Appointments (CA), saying the confirmation process is flawed.

Sotto, a member of the CA, expressed his concern over the regular reappointments issued by the President for his appointees because of their failure to secure the nod of the commission.

Since 2010, three members of the President’s Cabinet – Environment Secretary Ramon Paje, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima and Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman – have not been able to hurdle the confirmation process of the CA.

A fourth Cabinet member, Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla, who was appointed last year, has not been scheduled for hearing by the CA.

“There should be a three-strike rule. If you are bypassed three times you can no longer be reappointed to the same position,” Sotto said.

He cited the case of the United States where nominees of the President who are given a hard time during their confirmation hearings usually voluntarily withdraw their names right away.

However, Sotto said that the same cannot be said about the appointees in the country because they cannot be expected to exercise delicadeza (sense of propriety).

When President Aquino was a senator, he reportedly also pushed for a three-strike rule for the CA’s confirmation process.

A press statement of Aquino dated October 2007 noted that the “practice of reappointing her (former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) nominees regardless of the number of times these nominees have been bypassed by the CA frustrates the CA’s constitutional mandate.”

Then Senator Aquino filed Senate Bill 1719, which stated that “the President (Arroyo) has abused her power to appoint because of her consistent reappointment of her nominees who have been consecutively bypassed by the CA.”

“In fact, a Cabinet official, who had been successively bypassed for 15 times in a span of three years, of which seven took place in just one year, was re-appointed by the President, and was allowed to continue performing the functions supposedly reserved only for those qualified officials whose nominations had been confirmed by the CA,” Aquino added in his bill.

Apart from the three-strike rule, Sotto said that he would also push for the inclusion of the promotions of officials of the Philippine National Police and nominees to the government line agencies such as the Commissioners of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs to also go through the confirmation process of the CA.