Senator Imee Marcos on Tuesday, March 17 scored President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. over the “increasingly rampant practice” of the President to appoint acting Cabinet secretaries.

Marcos said this practice of the President, in effect, strips off the Commission on Appointments (CA) of its “constitutionally-vested power to give or withhold consent to appointments and undermining the very system of checks and balances built into our government.”

“Napakarami po nila (There are so many of them), there are 18 who should be subject to the Commission on Appointments (CA) purview. And we are duty-bound to decry the Commission, our own Commission on Appointments, for its flagrant inaction on the privilege speech delivered by Senator Marcoleta on the 27th of January 2026,” Marcos said in her speech after the CA confirmed the ad interim appointments of 57 generals, flag officer and senior officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

Marcos cited as an example the cases of Acting Executive Secretary Ralph Recto, Acting Presidential Communications Office (PCO) Secretary Dave Gomez, Acting Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, Acting Transportation Secretary Giovanni Lopez, Acting Justice Secretary Frederick Vida, Acting Finance Secretary Frederick Go, Acting Budget Secretary Rolando Toledo, Acting Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Juan Miguel Cuna, and Acting Philippine Space Agency Director General Gay Jane Perez.

She also questioned why the CA has not taken any meaningful step to address the matter even when Sen. Rodante Marcoleta first formally manifested of the problem last February 25.

Marcos lamented that the Commission itself did not even remind the Executive department to correct what is in truth “a growing constitutional concern.”

“It is true that the Supreme Court in Pimentel Jr. vs. Arroyo recognized the appointments in an acting capacity and the President's power to make them. But the Court was equally clear in warning that acting appointments, while permissible as temporary stop-gap measures, if abused, can also be a way of circumventing the need for confirmation by the CA,” she said.

“And that is precisely the danger now confronting us. What we are witnessing is no longer the occasional temporary designation made out of necessity, out of urgency; what we are instead witnessing is the normalization of acting appointments as a governing strategy,” she added.

The President’s sister said this may seem to be a deliberate method, perhaps, of bypassing the CA and diluting its sacrosanct constitutional role. 

“When more than 40 percent, almost half of the Cabinet is serving in an acting capacity, this can no longer be dismissed as incidental, transitional, or even harmless. This is no longer a band-aid stop-gap arrangement. This appears to be an emerging modus operandi,” she said.

“And it is one that the Commission on Appointments must confront, not ignore time and time again, repeatedly, session after session. It must also be stressed that under Executive Order No. 292 or the Administrative Code of 1987, temporary designations are not meant to extend indefinitely and, as a rule, should merely persist from six months to a year,” she said.

Some of these acting appointments, Marcos said, are now nearing that period; some are in great excess of that period. 

“The constitutional injury is therefore not merely theoretical or even prospective. It is ongoing, concrete; it is urgent. Action, therefore, is needed now,” she said.

“The Commission on Appointments must assert its constitutional prerogatives before silence ripens into surrender and before what was meant to be an exception becomes the permanent practice of this administration,” added the lawmaker.

Marcoleta, and Sen. Joel Villanueva, also stood up to manifest their support to Marcos’ manifestation. 

Citing Section 16, Article 7 of the Philippine Constitution, Marcoleta said the Executive department “cannot bypass the CA.”

“It is an independent body. It has to work, Mr. President. The President can appoint and designate members of his Cabinet, but the CA has the obligation to evaluate, to assess their competence, their fitness, their merit,” he said.

“We cannot do away with that responsibility. It was and it is a Constitutional duty,” the senator added. 

Senate President Vicente Sotto III, chairman of the CA, agreed with Marcos and tasked the secretariat to look into the rules of the Commission. 

Sotto also said the CA is waiting for the nominees too for their appearance before the Commission.