Choices for Duterte

“Duterte is not likely to make the same mistakes made by the yellow president in choosing

With Lourdes Sereno out of the highest judiciary seat, the Judicial Bar and Council (JBC), under the law, has to come up with a list of candidates for the top judiciary post for submission to the President.

After the scandal that engulfed the JBC over its inclusion of the name of an unqualified candidate in Sereno, despite its being aware of her not meeting the qualifications required by the Constitution and the Council itself, along with its cover-up of Sereno’s disqualification as an applicant, the public expects the JBC not to commit the same mistakes this time around.

The JBC is said to be ready with the list of candidates for the SC post and is soon to submit it to President Duterte, who will then make his choice.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra pitched in, saying that despite Duterte’s statement that he will not be appointing women for the post of Ombudsman and the Supreme Court’s chief justice as replacements for outgoing Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales and ousted CJ Lourdes Sereno, there are women candidates for the post in the JBC list.

At this time, there are only two senior women justices in the High Court and they are scheduled for retirement either this year or early next year. Associate Supreme Court Justice Teresita de Castro has already rejected her nomination and chose to retire on the day required by the Charter.

It is possible that the names of other women candidates are submitted for the highest judiciary post. But if one of them were to be chosen by Duterte, he may have the same problem the senior justices encountered in having a very young Chief Justice who was expected—until she got ousted—to remain in the SC’s top post for 20 years or so, causing demoralization among justices, some of whom hope to be promoted one day to the top seat.

Justice Antonio Carpio, the most senior SC justice, should be the top choice, but he has already rejected being a candidate for the SC top post, despite the fact that he has been the acting chief justice many times in the past.

He and Duterte hardly see eye to eye on various issues, especially the South China Sea where he keeps pushing the claim of sovereignty, which has hardly been surrendered by Duterte to China. Admit it or not, there is now regional peace, interrupted occasionally by the United States, and now the French government.

The next senior justice is Justice Presbitero Velasco, although he is also about to retire very soon. The next is Justice Diosdado Peralta, followed by Justices Bersamin, del Castillo, Jardeleza. The others are relatively new to the High Court. The rest are Aquino appointees and are not likely to be appointed by Duterte, that is, if his choice for CJ will stem from the present crop of justices.

There is always the possibility of the JBC including in its list, appellate court justices as CJ candidates, although the present crop of High Court justices wouldn’t be too happy having as their chief justice a junior in the hierarchy of the High Court or even worse, the sitting SC justices would be terribly demoralized should an outsider be picked by Duterte as the SC CJ.

He would be doing more or less what the yellow president did in appointing Lourdes Sereno—not in ordering the JBC to include Sereno in the list submitted, but in the yellow president appointing someone who had zero bench experience even in litigation, since Sereno merely acted as Justice Feliciano’s researcher in the arbitration case of the government against Piatco.

Duterte is not likely to make the same mistakes made by the yellow president in choosing the new SC chief.

Similarly, a new Ombudsman has to be appointed by the President, whose names will appear from a JBC list.

Mistakes were also made by the yellow president when he appointed then retired SC associate justice Conchita Carpio Morales. There was hardly any objection to her appointment as her credentials were good at the time. However, it didn’t take long for the Filipinos to realize that the yellow president had tapped Morales to serve his political interests and those of his aides, including ensuring that his Ombudsman charges his political foes and detain them without bail. This, despite the cases lodged against them and evidence presented had been manufactured.

What was most important, of course, in appointing Morales had been the yellow president’s assurance from the Ombudsman that he is protected from prosecution. And she certainly has fulfilled that promise to her yellow patron by filing weak cases against him.

Not surprisingly, as Morales exits the Ombudsman’s Office, she will forever be known as the queen of selective justice—a perpetual title that is so apt for her.