The Supreme Court has sustained the administrative penalty imposed on three former members of the Career Executive Service Board (CESB) for signing a resolution promoting their respective career executive service officer (CESO) ranks.
In a decision, the SC’s Second Division upheld the 2015 ruling of the Court of Appeals that affirmed the three-month suspension order against then CESB members Proceso Domingo, Angelito Twaño and Susan Solo as well as the revocation of their CESO ranks by the Office of the President (OP) in 2013.
The high court dismissed for lack of merit the petition of the three former CESB officials seeking reversal of the CA ruling.
The SC agreed with the appellate court that the OP was correct in finding petitioners guilty of simple negligence for signing CESB resolutions that included their names and approved promotion of their respective CESO ranks.
“Here, as ranking officials in their respective offices and as members of the CESB, petitioners certainly cannot justify the lack of diligence in the performance of their functions as CESB members by the mere expediency of claiming that they did not know the documents they were signing or that they were unable to verify the relevant CESB Resolutions before signing because the documents were ‘lumped together,” stated the decision penned by Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa.
The high tribunal noted that even when the three former officials claimed that they stepped out of the deliberations of the CESB on their application for promotion in CESO ranks, “petitioners were aware of the possible conflict of interest that would arise in their participation in the CESB deliberations and should have, when presented with the Resolutions, been more circumspect in reviewing the same before affixing their signatures thereon.”
The SC held that the revocation of the CESO rank promotions of Domingo, Twaño and Solo was likewise correct.
It pointed out that such revocation was natural result of the “invalidity” of the CESB resolutions and that career service executives are under the authority of the President.
“The recommendations, being invalid, the conferment of CESO ranks flowing from those invalid recommendations are likewise invalid. In this regard, suffice it to state that the power of appointment and conversely, the power to remove, is essentially discretionary and cannot be controlled, not even by the Court, as long as it is exercised properly by the appointing authority,” added the Court.
Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, chair of the second division, and Associate Justices Estela Perlas – Bernabe, Jose Reyes Jr. and Amy Lazaro-Javier concurred with the ruling.
Records showed that petitioners were appointed to the CESB for a six-year term in Jan. 2010 by then president and now House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Domingo was undersecretary of the Department of National Defense, Twaño was regional director of the Department of Public Works and Highways while Solo was a director at the Presidential Management Staff before they were transferred to the CESB.
Their CESO rank promotions were signed and approved by Arroyo in June 2010, but were not recognized by then incoming president Benigno Aquino III who later on revoked the said promotions.