During Gloria Arroyo’s term as the Malacañang tenant, Noynoy, then a senator, said it was wrong for a president to reappoint her nominees who have been bypassed by the bicameral Commission on Appointments (CA).
He even sponsored a bill to make it law, and was also pretty strict in saying that after two bypasses of the CA, the confirming power, the President, should no longer reappoint the bypassed nominee in the event Congress adjourns.
During the 14th Congress, then Senator Aquino filed Senate Bill 1719 entitled “An Act Limiting the Reappointment of Presidential Nominees Bypassed by the Commission on Appointments,” saying that “Arroyo abused her power to reappoint her bypassed Cabinet secretaries because of her consistent reappointment of her nominees who have been consecutively bypassed by the Commission on Appointments.”
In that particular bill, Aquino cited a Cabinet official “who has been successively bypassed 15 times in a span of three years yet has been reappointed by the President and allowed to continue performing the functions reserved only to those officials whose nominations have been confirmed by the CA.”
The reason he gave for the bill was that it is the CA’s constitutional mandate to serve as an effective check against the possible abuse of the President’s power to appoint, but that this is being frustrated by the current practice, as the President merely reappoints all her bypassed nominees regardless of the number of times the said nominees have been bypassed by the CA.
His bill added that “the restraint against possible abuse of the President’s appointing power is clearly rendered ineffective, if not totally non-existent.”
But now that he is president, he and his spokesmen now say it is right for Noynoy to reappoint, as many times as he wants, his bypassed secretaries, because the bypassed officials continue to enjoy his trust and confidence.
Noynoy’s spokesman Edwin Lacierda now has another justification, saying that not all incidents that see a political appointee bypassed by the CA could be interpreted as outright rejection of the bicameral group mandated to screen designated officials.
Lacierda said that there are various reasons the CA wasn’t able to go over an appointee seeking their concurrence. Besides, Lacierda said, Noynoy only gets to reappoint a government official whom he has designated to a post, if he firmly believes that the person is capable of delivering results in a government position he sees as tailor-fit for the person.
Noynoy then is saying that it is he, and not the CA, and not the Constitution, that should have a say on who should stay on in his Cabinet and that the CA’s confirmation or rejection, through bypasses, does not have to be heeded. So he violates the Charter because he says he who should the say who should be retained and not the CA?
That’s the sound of a looming dictator and his clear disdain of the Constitution.
Why should it be wrong when this was practiced by Gloria, but is now right just because Noynoy now sits in Malacañang and is the appointing power?
What happened to his rationale in submitting his bill? He did say then that the constitutional mandate of the CA to confirm or reject a nominee is a mechanism for check  between the executive and the legislature against the abuse of the appointing power, the President.
And what makes Noynoy think that he, as president, is above abusing his powers when in fact, he has been abusing those powers from the day he sat in Malacañang.
He not only abuses power; he even usurps the powers of both the legislature and the judiciary.
He also deliberately violates the Constitution while claiming to be right all the time, even when he commits a grievous wrong.
It’s time he realizes he is not omnipotent, although he thinks he is because he has made all the other constitutional offices impotent.