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Friday, March 29, 2024

Justice vacates SC seat

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THE early retirement of Supreme Court Associate Justice Martin Villarama Jr. took effect on Friday as the Judicial and Bar Council announced it will meet on Jan. 18 to finalize a shortlist of possible successor to the retiring magistrate.

The Supreme Court also announced the appointment of a new deputy clerk of court for the en banc in the person of lawyer Anna-Li R. Papa-Gombio, whose appointment was announced through the high court’s Memorandum Order No. 04-2016.

The order was signed by Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Aranal-Sereno, Senior Justices Antonio Carpio and Presbitero Velasco Jr. who respective chair the high court’s first, second and third divisions.

Gombio graduated from the Ateneo Law School and has been in the Office of the SC en banc Clerk of Court for more than 20 years. 

The Deputy Clerk of Court has the authority to promulgate resolutions and decisions of the SC en banc in the absence of the Clerk of Court.

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Gombio was given the opportunity for the position after it was left vacant last July 14, 2015 following the promotion of Atty. Felipa Anama as Clerk of Court of the Court fs en banc. Anama succeeded lawyer Enriqueta Vidal who retired last year.

This came after the SC accorded Villarama retirement rites at the Manila Hotel   on Friday   after he availed of early retirement due to “deteriorating health condition” following his double-knee replacement in 2013 and his cataract operation in 2014.

Villarama started his career in the SC in 1970 as a technical assistant. He rose from the ranks to become a regional trial court judge in 1986, and then a Court of Appeals associate justice in 1998 before his appointment as SC justice in 2009.

The magistrate was supposed to originally retire from the SC upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70 on   April 14, a period covered by the ban on appointments during the election period.

The position of the chief justice and justices of the SC are exempt from the ban per the high court’s 2010 ruling for the vacancy in the retirement of then Chief Justice Reynato Puno.

President Benigno Aquino III questioned the said ruling, and his position was supposed to be tested by the vacancy to be left by Villarama’s retirement in April.

With the vacancy now outside the period for  midnight  appointment ban, the Chief Executive may now name his sixth appointee to the SC without any issue.

Of the 15 current justices of the high court, five were appointed by Aquino­—Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno and Associate Justices Bienvenido Reyes, Estela Perlas-Bernabe, Marvic Leonen and Francis Jardeleza.

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