ANTONIO J. VILLEGAS, ETC., ET AL., PETITIONERS, VS. ABELARDO SUBIDO, ETC., ET AL., RESPONDENTS.

Before Us for resolution is the motion
of petitioner Gregorio A. Ejercito charging the
respondent Commissioner of Civil Service with contempt of this Court.  The charge, in substance, is that said
respondent thru indirection failed or refused to obey the final judgment of
this Court which reads:

“IN VIEW OF ALL THE FOREGOING, judgment is hereby
rendered:  1.  commanding respondent Civil Service
Commissioner forthwith to approve the appointment of Gregorio A. Ejercito as City Legal Officer of Manila and release the
same; and 2.  commanding respondent Civil
Service Commissioner to act on the 28 appointments of the staff of the City
Legal Officer, men­tioned on page 2 of this decision, within 30 days from date
of their re-submission to the Civil Service Commission.  No special pronouncement as to costs.”

From the motion, opposition, reply, rejoinder and answer to
rejoinder, filed by the parties, as well as from the arguments during the
hearing, it appears undisputed that purportedly in obedience to Our decision,
respondent Commissioner approved as provisional with conditions the appointment
of petitioner Ejercito under Section 24(c) of the
Civil Service Law, fixing January 11, 1969 as the ef­fective date thereof, and
returned “without action” the appointments of the twenty-eight other
petitioners on the ground that no merit and promotion plan for the City of
Manila had as yet been received by the Civil Service Com­mission.

For purposes of the motion for contempt, We find that in view of
the reasons stated in Our decision, the approval of petitioner Ejercito’s
appointment as “provisional” ig­nored Our finding that said
petitioner was qualified for the position to which he was appointed; hence, the
qualification of the appointment as provisional, effective January 11, 1969,
made by respondent Commissioner, must be considered as non-existent,
considering that the character of the appoint­ment extended by Mayor Villegas
to said petitioner was a “Pro­motion”, which is permanent, the
appointment “to take effect as of January 1, 1968.” Under Our
decision, the Commissioner of Civil Service, in approving petitioner Ejercito’s appoint­ment, could not give it any other
character.

As regards the appointments of the twenty-eight other
petitioners, as to whom We consider petitioner Ejercito’s
reply dated January 31, 1969 as their own motion to compel respondent
Commissioner to act in accordance with Our deci­sion, We also find that in
returning said appointments “with­out action”, respondent
Commissioner failed to comply with the letter and spirit of Our decision.  It is obvious that what We ordered respondent
Civil Service Commissioner to do was to approve said appointments after
processing the same and verifying that the appointees are civil service eligi­bles and qualified for the positions to which they
were respectively appointed, taking into account the character of each
appointment and the date it was to take ef­fect.  By virtue of the fact that said appointments
were yet to be processed, We did not command respondent Commis­sioner to
approve outright the said twenty-eight appointments, as We had done in
petitioner Ejercito’s case, but instead to act
on said appointments within thirty (30) days, i.e. to process and approve them
upon verification of the appointees’ qualification and eligibility and in the
con­trary case to disapprove them.

However, considering that it has not been shown that respondent
Commissioner, who acted in consultation with the Solicitor General, willfully
disobeyed the final judgment of this Court, the Court, with the expectation
that respon­dent Commissioner will now act in accordance with the tenor of the
judgment as spelled out in this resolution, will re­frain from making a finding
that respondent Commissioner committed contempt of court.

PREMISES CONSIDERED, the motion charging respondent Civil
Service Commissioner in contempt of court is denied.  However, said respondent is hereby ordered:
(a) to approve the promotional appointment of Gregorio A. Ejercito
as City Legal Officer effective January 1, 1968, under Section 24(b) of the
Civil Service Law, the approval to be given within five days from date of
re-submission of the appointment to the Civil Service Commission; and (b) to
approve the appoint­ments of the twenty-eight members of the staff of the City
Legal Officer upon processing and verification that the ap­pointees are civil
service eligibles and qualified for the positions to
which they were respectively appointed taking into account the character of
each appointment and the date it was to take effect, the approval to be given
within ten days from date of re-submission of the appointments to the Civil
Service Commission.

Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, JBL, Dizon, Makalintal, Zaldivar, Sanchez, Ruiz Castro, Fernando, Capistrano, Teehankee, and Barredo, JJ., concur.