Editorials

Broken

The belated confirmation of three Cabinet secretaries this weekfour long years after they were first named to their postshas temporarily obscured the problem that lies at the heart of the Commission on Appointments system. It will become obvious again, however, as soon as Congress returns next month. The CA has become a members club, where the interests of its members are placed ahead of everyone elses.

This was the same problem that defined the CA in the years before martial law, except for one substantial difference. Today, the CA, a special constitutional body composed of lawmakers from both chambers of Congress, actively undermines its role in the Constitutions elaborate infrastructure of checks and balances.

To be sure, CA members have justified their objections to some of the appointees in check-and-balance terms. But four years to confirm someone like Justice Secretary Leila de Lima or Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman? No CA member ever attempted a full-scale campaign to force President Aquino to de-nominate De Lima or Soliman (or even Environment Secretary Ramon Paje); instead, those who did not like the secretary-designates found other ways to delay or defer confirmation.

If something truly disqualifying had been discovered in the last four years (say, hypothetically, that De Lima had taken part in voter fraud in her election law practice, or that Soliman cannot account for millions of pesos disbursed through the Conditional Cash Transfer program), then we would have joined our voice to the clamor to replace them. But there has been no such discovery. Indeed, the main factor behind the delay in their confirmation (Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago versus Soliman, for instance, or Sen. Jinggoy Estrada versus De Lima) seems to be mere personal animus.

De Lima and Soliman (and other appointees only belatedly confirmed) are not beyond reproach; they are certainly vulnerable to criticism. But the Executives appointing power was not meant to nominate perfect candidates, but only qualified officials who enjoy the Presidents full trust and will implement his policies. The Rules of the CA stipulate that the commission is driven by only one impelling motive, which is the efficient and harmonious functioning of the government.

Even if we give the CA the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that it can bypass an appointment, the repeated renomination of the appointee should properly be read as a signal to extend the same benefit of the doubt to the President as nominator. After all, he is forming his Cabinet, and the CA is bound, according to its own Rules, to accord the nomination or appointment weight and respect, to the end that all doubts should be resolved in of approval or confirmation.

What emerged from last weeks committee-level hearing at the CA, when Estrada questioned De Lima intensely, was the sense of entitlement that marks the members of this exclusive club. Letter-writer Romulo Macalintal noted Estradas outrageous suggestion, for instance, that De Lima should have approached each of the members, because it was tradition. Imagine that. When a nominee refuses to cheapen the process by knocking on doors and calling on each of the members, the members themselves see it as an affront.

No wonder a broken system failed to confirm someone like Jesse Robredo.

Breaking

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Editorials