Statement of President Aquino on the Issuance of a Status Quo Ante Order Regarding Executive Order No. 2
by the Supreme Court
Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a Status Quo Ante Order granting the motion of Bai Omera Dianalan-Lucman. She was one of four people who filed petitions before the Supreme Court questioning the constitutionality of Executive Order No. 2, but the Supreme Court only acted on Lucman.
We issued Executive Order No. 2 recalling, withdrawing, or revoking midnight appointments, because the previous administration had exceeded and abused the limits of its powers to appoint.
We had to issue EO2 because there were people who accepted illegal appointments. By knowingly accepting illegal appointments, they became part of a conspiracy to impede and to thwart, our people’s clamor for a return to good governance.
We put in their place people who shared our aims. Our appointees allowed us to discover questionable deals, which we immediately stopped. For instance, our appointees uncovered close to a billion pesos worth of anomalous contracts that had been entered into during the past administration. We have cancelled those contracts and saved the government hundreds of millions of pesos.