TEODORO B. PANGILINAN, PETITIONER, VS. GUILLERMO T. MAGLAYA, THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, SECRETARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS, RESPONDENTS.

The petitioner complains that he has been removed from office
without due process and just cause in disregard of his constitutional security
of tenure. Worse, his removal was made in bad faith,
immediately after his expose of certain anomalies in which his superiors were
involved.

Teodoro B. Pangilinan joined the government service on July 18,
1966, when he was appointed agent in the National Bureau of Investigation, a
position for which he had the appropriate civil service eligibility. He had risen to Supervising Agent when he
resigned to accept appointment as Executive Director of the Land Transportation
Office on July 8, 1987. He assumed
office on July 16, 1987.

The petitioner says that from February 19, 1988 to November 30,
1988, he was detailed to the Manila International Airport Authority, where he
served as Assistant General Manager in charge of finance and administration and
also of security and general services.

Upon his return to the LTO, he was designated as Resident
Ombudsman in addition to his regular duties. As such, he discovered, among other anomalies, irregularities in the
purchase of motor vehicle license plates. The license plates ordered were not reflective as required by P.D. 98
and B.P. 43. He says he brought this
matter to the attention of Asst. Secretary Manuel Sabalza of the Department of
Transportation and Communications and later of Secretary Pete Prado. Neither of them took any action.

On September 27, 1991, the petitioner called a press conference
to expose what the media later described as “the license plate mess.”
He also announced his intention to file graft charges with the Ombudsman
against Prado, Sabalza and Undersecretary Jose Valdecañas, also of the DOTC.

The following day, Secretary Prado relieved Pangilinan as Executive
Director of the LTO and replaced him with Guillermo Maglaya as
officer-in-charge. However, the
petitioner continued receiving his salary (although his allowances were
withheld) until December 31, 1991. When
he asked why his pay had been discontinued, he was informed by Asst. Secretary
Juan V. Borra, Jr. that Maglaya had already been designated as Acting Executive
Director of the LTO.

In this petition, Pangilinan prays for reinstatement on the
ground that no charge has been filed or proved against him to justify his
removal.

Required to comment, the Solicitor General argues that Pangilinan
was validly separated because he was appointed to the disputed position in an
acting capacity only. He does not
possess the qualifications prescribed for the office of Executive Director of
the LTO, which is a career executive service position for which only a career
executive service official is eligible. The petitioner is not a career executive service official. Hence, he could not be, and was not,
extended a permanent appointment.

The public respondents cite Sec. 5(1) of P.D. 807 which provides
that membership in the career executive service requires:

(i) that the official must
be included in the register of career executive eligibles; and

(ii) that the official must have been appointed to an appropriate
class in the Career Executive Service.

Respondent Augusto B. Araneta, who was later designated to
replace Maglaya, submitted the following certification from the Executive
Director of the Career Executive Service Board:^[1]

CERTIFICATION

This is to certify that the position of Executive Director in the
Land Transportation Office, Department of Transportation and Communications is
classified as a position belonging to the Career Executive Service (CES). This is to certify further that per records
of the Career Executive Service Board (CESB), MR. TEODORO B. PANGILINAN, former
Executive Director of said office is not a CES eligible, and was not appointed
to a rank in the CES.

This certification is issued upon the request of Atty. Augusto B.
Araneta for whatever purpose it may serve.

(Sgd.) ELMOR D. JURIDICO

Executive Director

The respondents also invoke the case of Achacoso v. Macaraig,^[2]
where this Court declared:

It is settled that a permanent appointment can be issued only
“to a person who meets all the
requirements for the position to which he is being appointed, including
the appropriate eligibility prescribed.” Achacoso did not. At best, therefore, his appointment could be
regarded only as temporary. And being
so, it could be withdrawn at will by the appointing authority and “at a
moment’s notice,” conformably to established jurisprudence.

x x x

The mere fact that a position belongs to the Career Service does
not automatically confer security of tenure on its occupant even if he does not
possess the required qualifications. Such right will have to depend on the nature of his appointment, which in
turn depends on his eligibility or lack of it. A person who does not have the requisite qualifications for the position
cannot be appointed to it in the first place, or, only as an exception to the
rule, may be appointed to it merely in an acting capacity in the absence of
appropriate eligibles. The appointment
extended to him cannot be regarded as permanent even if it may be so
designated.

The purpose of an acting or temporary appointment is to prevent a
hiatus in the discharge of official functions by authorizing a person to
discharge the same pending the selection of a permanent or another
appointee. The person named in an
acting capacity accepts the position under the condition that he shall
surrender the office once he is called upon to do so by the appointing
authority.

In his reply, Pangilinan submits that the Achacoso case is not
applicable because the petitioner therein was, to begin with, not a civil
service eligible. The petitioner says
he is, having passed the board examination for certified public accountants. He also argues that his appointment must be
likened to the provisional appointment under the old Civil Service Act before
it was replaced by P.D. 807. The
provisional appointment enjoyed security of tenure.

Pangilinan adds that even on the assumption that his appointment
was not permanent, his separation must still be for a valid cause because
Article IX-B, Section 2(3), of the Constitution applies to all officers and
employees in the civil service without distinction.

Invoking the case of Gray v. De Vera,^[3] Pangilinan likens himself to the
petitioner therein who was summarily relieved
when, as the board secretary of the People’s Homesite and Housing Corporation,
he sent a telegram to the President of the Philippines imputing irregularities
to the directors. His separation also
came the following day. Although Gray
was holding a primarily confidential position without any fixed term, this Court
ordered his reinstatement. We held that
he had been denied procedural due process and there was no valid cause for his
removal.

Also cited by the petitioner are Cariño v. ACCFA,^[4]
Floreza v. Ongpin^[5]
and Jocom v. Robredo (not Regalado),^[6] in
all of which cases the security of tenure of the dismissed employees was
upheld.

The petitioner raises a new issue, to wit, that even if he were
considered only an acting appointee, he nevertheless could not be replaced
except by a person possessing the required qualifications, as required by PD
807. He has produced certifications,^[7]
also from the Executive Director of the Career Executive Service Board, that
neither Guillermo T. Maglaya nor Augusto B. Araneta is a CES eligible or a
career executive service officer. He also
argues, belatedly too, that as a presidential appointee, he could be replaced
only by the President of the Philippines and not by only the Secretary of
Transportation and Communications.

As required by the Court, the respondents have submitted a
Compliance manifesting that Juan A. Magarro, Jr., the new appointee to the
position of Executive Director of the LTO (replacing Guillermo Maglaya and
Antonio B. Araneta) possesses the prescribed qualifications for the office.^[8]

They repeat that the applicable case is Achacoso, not Gray. Gray was extended a permanent appointment
whereas Achacoso, like Pangilinan, could be appointed only in an acting
capacity for lack of the prescribed qualifications for the office.

We must hold for the respondents.

Gray and the other cases cited by the petitioner involved
permanent appointees who therefore had security of tenure. Pangilinan was only an acting appointee
because he did not have the requisite qualifications; as such, he could not
claim security of tenure. This Court
has repeatedly
held that this guaranty is available only to permanent appointees.^[9] The fact
that Pangilinan was qualified for his initial appointment as agent in the NBI
does not mean he was qualified for all other positions he might later occupy in
the civil service. The law does not
prescribe uniform qualifications for all public positions regardless of nature
or degree.

Although Gray was holding a highly confidential position, the
Court regarded his separation as a removal and so applied the
constitutional prohibition against the suspension or dismissal of an officer or
member of the civil service without cause as provided by law. That was a rather loose interpretation of
the term “dismissal,” which is defined as the ouster of the incumbent
before the expiration of his term. Subsequent decisions have made it clear that where a person holds his
position at the pleasure of a superior or subject to some supervening event,
his separation from office is not a removal.^[10] It
is effected by the will of the superior or by the happening of the contingency,
resulting in another and different mode of terminating official relations known
as expiration of the term.

Chief Justice Concepcion explained the distinction between
removal and expiration of the term in Alajar v. Alba^[11]
thus:

In the case at bar, the term of respondent Alajar as Vice Mayor of
the City of Roxas is not fixed by law. However, the latter, in effect, vests in the President the power
to fix such term. When in November
1955, petitioner Alba was designated as Acting Vice-Mayor of said City, the
term of respondent Alba was, hereby, fixed implicitly by the President, in the
exercise of his aforementioned authority. Thus, the term of office of Alajar expired and his right to hold
office was extinguished, with the same legal effect as if the term had
been fixed by Congress itself. In other
words, Alajar was not removed from office, for “to remove an officer is to
oust him from office before the expiration of his term” (Manalang
v. Quitoriano et al., 50 Off. Gaz., 2515). Alajar merely lost the right to hold the office of Vice-Mayor of the
City of Roxas by expiration of his term as such.

The petitioner’s invocation of the provisional appointment as
comparable to his position is a grasping at straws. The provisional appointment has long been abolished and has no
legal application or effect in this case. There are now only two kinds of appointment under the Administrative
Code of 1987, to wit:

SEC. 27. Employment
Status. – Appointment in the career service shall be permanent or
temporary.

(1)                 
Permanent status. A
permanent appointment shall be issued to a
person who meets all the requirements for the position to which he is
being appointed, including the appropriate eligibility prescribed, in
accordance with the provisions of law, rules and standards promulgated in pursuance thereof.

(2)   
Temporary appointment. In the absence of appropriate eligibles and it becomes necessary in
the public interest to fill a vacancy, a temporary appointment shall be issued
to a person who meets all the requirements for the position to which he is
being appointed except the appropriate civil service eligibility: Provided, That such temporary
appointment shall not exceed twelve months, but the appointee may be replaced
sooner if a qualified civil service eligible becomes available.

Strictly speaking, the petitioner’s temporary appointment as Executive
Director of the LTO should have ended twelve months after he assumed office, or
on July 16, 1988. From that date, his
appointment had ceased to be valid even if a qualified replacement was not yet
available and consequently had to be discontinued pursuant to the above-quoted
provision. Indeed, even on the
assumption that
his appointment could be and had been validly extended beyond the
one-year limit, that extended term was nevertheless validly terminated with the
appointment of his qualified replacement.

The petitioner’s contention that he could not be relieved by
Secretary Prado but only by the President of the Philippines is also a shot in
the dark. It has long been settled, and does not
require further elaboration here, that the acts of a Department Secretary, when
“performed and promulgated in the regular course of business” are
presumptively the acts of the President unless “disapproved or
reprobated” by him. This doctrine
dates back to 1939, when it was first laid down by Justice Laurel in Villena v.
Secretary of the Interior,^[12] and
has been consistently observed since then. Parenthetically, the petitioner’s own appointment to the disputed
position was signed not by President Corazon C. Aquino but by Executive
Secretary Joker P. Arroyo.^[13]

In view of the foregoing considerations, we hold that Pangilinan
has lost the right to the position of Executive Director of the LTO and so
cannot be reinstated therein.

Shall the Court end here? There is more to be said.

It is not difficult to see that the petitioner was replaced
because of his expose and his threat to bring charges against his
superiors. His relief was clearly an
act of punishment if not personal vengeance. This is not denied. The
respondents, while invoking the law to justify his separation, have made no
effort whatsoever to justify their motives.

In Gray, the Court held that the board secretary, while holding a
highly confidential position, owed his loyalty not to the board but to the
government. In the present case,
Pangilinan was not even holding a similar position. His continued incumbency did not depend upon his enjoyment of the
confidence of his superiors who had no personal claim to his loyalty. In exposing what he considered the anomalies
in the DOTC, he was, like Gray, manifesting his concern for the government
whose interests he wanted to protect.

It would be a sorry
day, indeed, if a civil servant could be summarily removed from his position
for the “sin” of complaining about the irregularities of his
superiors. This would not only impair
the integrity of the civil service but also undermine the campaign to encourage
the public, including those in the civil service, to expose and denounce
venality in government.

Pangilinan’s denunciation of the non-reflective license plates
was not the act of a rabble-rouser or a publicity-seeker. The record shows that he quietly brought the
matter to the attention of his superiors, giving reasons for his
misgivings. They took no action. Feeling frustrated, he sought the attention
of the media and told them of his objection to the non-reflective license
plates. He cited the laws that he
claimed had been violated. He narrated
his efforts to prevent their violation. He spoke of the indifference of his superiors. In doing all these, he was exercising his right as a citizen, and
especially as a civil servant, to denounce official misconduct and improve the
public service.

This is not to say, of course, that Pangilinan’s charges are
valid. The Court is not prepared to do
so at this time because the evidence on this matter is not before it. For all we know, there is a satisfactory
explanation for the attitude of his superiors; it is possible that it is
Pangilinan who has misinterpreted the law or misread the facts. But true or not, the charges per se,
and standing alone, could not be the basis of Pangilinan’s swift and summary
replacement.

Pangilinan was separated the day immediately following his press
conference. The Court sees the action
as a retaliation. The public
respondents say they were merely terminating his incumbency in accordance with existing
law. The Court sees that termination as
a punishment.

Under the expanded definition of judicial power in Article VIII,
Section 1, of the Constitution, the Court can declare the acts of the public
respondents as tainted with grave abuse of discretion and therefore invalid.

But it is not as simple as that. The obstinate fact is that, regardless of the motives of his superiors,
Pangilinan no longer had any right to the disputed position when he was
separated from it in 1991. He ceased to
be entitled to it in 1988 upon the lapse of the maximum period for his acting
appointment. Obviously, he is not
entitled to it now. Even if it be
supposed that the public respondents acted maliciously when they relieved him
in 1991, his reinstatement is still not possible under the law as it now
stands.

The petitioner warns that the dismissal of his petition would
open the door to the summary separation of civil servants to the prejudice of
the integrity and independence of the civil service. He claims that “there are about 2,067 CESO positions in the
entire Philippine civil service. Of
this number only 372 or about 18% are occupied by Career Executive Service
eligibles.”^[14]
The rest may be summarily separated as acting appointees and are therefore
subject to the whims of their superiors. He suggests that “a ruling by this Honorable Court that would
sustain the position of petitioner would go a long way toward the upliftment of
the morale of the ‘ineligibles.’”

Assuming that the petitioner’s statistics are correct, the Court
can only share his trepidation. We can
do no more. As judges, we can only
interpret and apply the law and, despite our doubts about its wisdom, cannot
repeal or amend it. In the case at bar,
we have no power to give the petitioner the qualifications he does not
possess. Qualifications for public officers
are prescribed by the Constitution or the law, or even by implementing regulations,
but not by the decisions of courts.

The problem posed by the petitioner is a serious threat to the
integrity and independence of the civil service. As demonstrated in this case, the doctrine announced in Achacoso
may be used to muzzle and punish legitimate complaint and even to persecute
“difficult” subordinates. That doctrine, let it be stressed, is only an interpretation and
application by the Court of the law as enacted by the legislative and
implemented by the executive. That
doctrine can change only if the laws and regulations on which it was based are
also changed, not by this Court but by the political departments.

In Javier v. Commission on Elections,^[15]
we said:

The Supreme Court is not only the highest arbiter of legal
questions but also the conscience of the government. The citizen comes to us in quest of law but we must also give him
justice. The two are not always the
same.

Indeed they are not, and sadly so for the petitioner. For ironically, the law he invokes for the
protection of his right has instead denied him the justice he seeks and
deserves. This emphasizes, no less
sadly, the fallacy that for every legal wrong there is a judicial remedy. Untrue, unfortunately. The Court is not a panacea. There are times, regrettably, when justice
is shackled by the law, and even this Court cannot break the chains.

WHEREFORE, the petition is DISMISSED. No costs.

SO ORDERED.

Narvasa, C.J., Feliciano, Padilla, Bidin, Griño-Aquino,
Regalado, Davide, Jr., Nocon, Bellosillo, Melo, Quiason, and Vitug, JJ., concur.

Romero, J., join the dissenting
opinion of J. Puno.

Puno, J., please see dissenting
opinion.

^[1]
Rollo, p. 89.

^[2]
195 SCRA 235.

^[3]
28 SCRA 268 (1969).

^[4]
18 SCRA 183.

^[5]
182 SCRA 692.

^[6]
201 SCRA 72.

^[7]
Rollo, pp. 116, 117.

^[8]
Ibid., p. 164.

^[9]
Gabriel vs. Domingo, 189 SCRA 674; Pari-An vs. Civil Service
Commission, 202 SCRA 772; Pamantasan ng
Lungsod ng Maynila v. Intermediate Appellate Court, 140 SCRA 22;
Perez v. Subido, 23 SCRA 1074.

^[10]
Pacete v. Acting Chairman of Commission on Audit, 185 SCRA 1, Griño v.
Civil Service Commission, 194 SCRA 458; Achacoso v. Macaraig, 195 SCRA
235.

^[11]
100 Phil. 683.

^[12]
67 Phil. 451.

^[13]
Rollo, p. 24.

^[14]
Rollo, p. 118.

^[15]
144 SCRA 194.

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