The Judicial and Bar Council has been asked to include Supreme Court Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-de Castro in the shortlist of nominees to replace Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, whose term will end in July.
Retired Supreme Court justice Arturo Brion nominated De Castro, who is set to retire in October, in a letter to the JBC dated May 3, 2018, which cited her 45 years in government serivice.
“Through all these years, she has served the government with competence, probity and integrity,” Brion said in his nomination letter.
“Her long years in the prosecutorial service [almost 19 years] and in the Sandiganbayan [more than 10 years], not to mention her more than a decade of experience as an associate justice of the Supreme Court qualify her for the position of Ombudsman,” Brion added.
Before her appointment to the Supreme Court in December 2007, De Castro served as presiding justice of the Sandiganbayan and chaired the special division of the anti-graft court that convicted former President Joseph Estrada of plunder in 2007.
De Castro was elected president of the International Association of Women Judge and served a term from 2012 to 2014.
A product of University of the Philippines College of Law, she joined the government in 1973 as law clerk and legal assistant in the Supreme Court. She then moved to the Department of Justice as a state counsel from 1978 to 1995 before her appointment to the Sandiganbayan.
As proof of De Castro’s competence and integrity, Brion cited the numerous awards received by the retiring justice—including the Presidential Medal of Merit in 1998 for her service as one of the peace negotiators during the terms of the late former President Corazon Aquino and former President Fidel Ramos and the Chief Justice Hilario Davide Reform Award for the reforms she implemented in the Sandiganbayan.
De Castro is a vocal critic of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, with whom she had a shouting match last month during the tension-filled oral arguments on the quo warranto case against the embattled SC chief in Baguio City. She was also among the five justices who testified in the impeachment hearings against Sereno in the House of Representatives earlier this year.
A private citizen, Jocelyn Marie Acosta, recently asked Solicitor General Jose Calida to also initiate quo warranto petition against De Castro before the Supreme Court based on the same grounds used against Sereno, particularly the alleged failure to file Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net worth.
Acosta said De Castro should be removed from her post for submitting only 15 SALNs when she has been in government service since 1973.
However, Calida rejected the request, citing lack of basis and evidence.
The JBC, the seven-member constitutional body tasked to screen nominees for positions in the judiciary and the Office of the Ombudsman, has extended the deadline for application and nomination for the Ombudsman post from May 2 to May 15.
Morales, 76, is also a retired SC justice who was appointed by former President Benigno Aquino III as Ombudsman in 2011.
She replaced Merceditas Gutierrez, who resigned on May 6, 2011 from the post to avoid an impeachment trial in the Senate, leaving an unexpired term until Nov. 30, 2012.
In summer session last month, the SC dismissed petitions seeking to remove Morales from her post for alleged overstaying.
Justices voted unanimously to dismiss the petitions filed last year by former Metro Rail Transit Line 3 general manager Al Vitangcol and lawyer Rey Nathaniel Ifurung for lack of merit.
