Only five associate justices of the Supreme Court—four senior and one junior —will vie for the most coveted post in the judiciary vacated by Chief Justice Teresita Leonardo de Castro, who was compulsorily retired last Oct. 8, as the deadline for the reception of application and nomination for the post ended at 4:30 pm on Friday.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, an ex-officio member of the Judicial and Bar Council, revealed that no other application or nomination for the top post has been received on Friday, the last day of filing of application and submission of the required documents.
“No additional constants for the CJ [chief justice] position. Still only five applicants as of this time. The deadline is at 4:30 pm,” Guevarra said in a text message to reporters.
The five senior justices—Acting Chief Justice Antonio Carpio and Associate Justices Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin and Estela Perlas-Bernabe—have accepted their automatic nominations for chief justice post, while Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo declined.
A junior magistrate, Associate Justice Andres Reyes Jr., also accepted his nomination by retired Sandiganbayan Justice Raoul Victorino for the post. Victorino nominated all 13 incumbent justices of SC.
Del Castillo, the only senior magistrate who declined his automatic nomination, will sit as acting chairman of JBC when it deliberates on the vacancy.
“As a matter of practice, the most senior SC justice who did not apply for the chief justice post will preside over the deliberations on the chief justice position. Hence, Justice Del Castillo will preside over the JBC when the chief justice post will be taken up,” Guevarra explained.
Del Castillo cited his retirement in July next year as reason for declining the nomination.
“I foresee that, as chairperson of the 2018 Bar examinations, my work will extend to the months just prior to my retirement. That will leave me not much time to embark on notable projects that a Chief Justice will normally want to have an imprint on,” he stressed.
Earlier, the seven-member council decided to scrap the conduct of public interviews of the senior members of SC who are vying for Chief Justice.
This was after the Supreme Court unanimously passed a resolution calling for the JBC to do away with the public interviews of senior magistrates seeking the top post in the judiciary, as they insisted that judicial philosophy could already be known through the decisions they had written.
The scrapping of the public interview, in effect, amended Rule 7 of the JBC Rules which provides that interviews for the positions in the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, Sandiganbayan, Court of Tax Appeals, and Shari’a Appellate Court; Ombudsman, Deputy Ombudsman, and Special Prosecutor; and Chairperson and Regular Members of the Legal Education Board shall be conducted in public by the JBC en banc.
Justices Carpio and Bernabe are the ones who will benefit from the JBC’s decision considering that Reyes, Peralta and Bersamin will no longer need to be interviewed by the panel, since their previous interviews for the CJ post that was left vacant by lawyer Ma. Lourdes Sereno is valid for one year.
“The JBC thoroughly discussed the SC resolution in its last two en banc meetings. In the end by a majority vote, the JBC agreed to dispense with the public interview of senior SC justices vying for the CJ position, without prejudiced to closed-door interviews by the members of the JBC,” Guevarra said.
Majority members of the JBC believed that sitting members of the of SC had already been publicly interviewed when they first applied for the SC positions, the justice secretary explained.
“Any public inquiry anew on matters pertaining to their SALNs (Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth) and other personal matters in full view of the public through live media coverage would not serve any substantially useful purpose,” Guevarra added.
He stressed that the Carpio and Bernabe may still be thoroughly interviewed by the JBC, albeit not in full glare of the public.
Guevarra clarified that the exemption from public interview would only cover senior associate justices who were automatically nominated and accepted their nomination, and associate justices who have served the SC for at least five years.
The rest of the candidates will be subjected to a public interview.
“For non-SC justices applying for the CJ, the public interview is mandatory because they’re not even part of the SC yet. For junior SC associate justices, they have yet to prove themselves worthy of aspiring to become ‘primus inter pares’ (first among equals),” Guevara said.
The JBC earlier extended the Oct. 15 deadline for nominations for the chief justice post to Oct. 26.
The Constitution requires the Chief Justice, just like the associate justices, to be a natural-born Filipino citizen, at least 40 years old, with experience as judge or in private law practice for at least 15 years, and a person with proven competence, integrity, probity and independence.
Duterte is expected to appoint over 10 members of the High Court during his six-year term. He has already appointed six justices so far — current Ombudsman Samuel Martires, Noel Tijam, Andres Reyes Jr., Alexander Gesmundo, Jose Reyes Jr. and Ramon Paul Hernando.