THE Judicial and Bar Council did not relax the rules on the submission of Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth for the benefit of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, Senator Francis Escudero said Wednesday.
The JBC is a constitutionally-created body that recommends appointees for vacancies that may arise in the composition of the Supreme Court and other lower courts, and in the offices of the Ombudsman, and the Special Prosecutor.
Even before Sereno applied for the post of Associate Justice at the Supreme Court, Escudero, then a member of the JBC, said the rules were already relaxed.
“If I remember it, the rules were relaxed for all applicants, which included the chief justice, during that time and after that time .That is not even for the position of chief justice but for ordinary justice. We applied it to other justices at the time,” Escudero said.
He noted that anyone could peruse the minutes of their meeting when they decided to relax the rules.
“We decided, based on the minutes, on what’s applicable to all applicants,” said Escudero.
He recalled there were applicants who had worked for the government for 20 years or 15 years, and moved from one agency to another, with no record of their SALN.
Sereno had been accused of failure to comply with all the requirements needed to be Chief Justice when she did not submit all of her SALNs. This was one of the grounds in the impeachment complaint filed against her and also the basis for a quo warranto petition filed before the Supreme Court.
At least two Supreme Court justices said Sereno should not have been included in the list of 2012 JBC nominees for the high magistrate post because of this failure.
Escudero said the JBC had been discussing associate justice applicant Roberto Abad situation when they had relaxed the SALN rules.
However, Escudero said the relaxed rules did not mean that applicants were excused from submitting SALNs, especially the most recent ones. The relaxed rules only applied to very old SALNs, he said.