At last, after some silence, the lntegrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) has adopted the position that “it is unconstitutional for President Arroyo to appoint a successor to Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno”.
As the mandatory national bar association in the country, the IBP should have been more prompt and pro-active in reacting to the raging and controversial constitutional issue.
Below is a recent news item on the matter. It states that former lBP national president Joel Cadiz has reported that the association had adopted the stand during the recently concluded session of the IBP House of Delegates.
I wonder why the incumbent president did not make the official announcement on the matter and why the full text of the approved resolution has not been published in the Philippine dailies as of today for the information of the entire Philippine Bar and the general public.
I will try to secure a copy of the said resolution to discuss the legal logic behind it.
GMA can't appoint next Supreme Court chief - IBP
By Aurea Calica and Delon Porcalla
(The Philippine Star)
Updated January 31, 2010 12:00 AM
MANILA, Philippines - The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) said it is unconstitutional for President Arroyo to appoint a successor to Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Reynato Puno.
Former IBP national president Joel Cadiz said the group’s House of Delegates came up with the stand – upon motion of IBP governor for Eastern Visayas Rolando Inting – during the annual convention of its officials and members in Puerto Princesa, Palawan.
The motion drew no objections.
Cadiz said the Constitution is explicit against presidential appointments two months before the May 10 elections.
“It is hoped the JBC (Judicial and Bar Council) will listen to all the positions including that of the IBP as regards to the constitutionality of the appointment after Chief Justice Puno’s retirement,” Cadiz said in a phone interview.
“If the JBC determines that it is unconstitutional (for the President to make the appointment), it need not send a list to the President. We hope the JBC will consider all arguments and make that determination that if they don’t submit a list to the President, it agrees on the (unconstitutionality of her appointment),” Cadiz added.
Puno retires on May 17 and an appointment can only be made when there is already a vacancy, according to those opposing Malacañang’s pronouncement that Mrs. Arroyo may appoint a chief justice-in-waiting.
According to Palace critics, May 17 is covered by the two-month election ban on appointments by the President.
SC Senior Associate Justices Antonio Carpio and Conchita Carpio-Morales have applied for the job of Puno but said they would only accept the appointment if it is made by the next president.
Bargaining power
An organization of progressive lawyers believes Mrs. Arroyo wants to appoint the next chief justice so she can have “leverage and bargaining power” in the SC after the end of her term on June 30.
“If she makes the appointment of the next chief justice, all members of the Court will have been her appointees. And that is a huge leverage and bargaining power for political maneuvers and power play,” the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) said in a statement.
Mrs. Arroyo is expected to face criminal charges for her administration’s alleged abuses.
The NUPL called Mrs. Arroyo’s trying to rush the appointment of Puno’s successor as a “sinister design to perpetuate herself in power, cloak herself with immunity and dangle impunity, debase the post of the Chief Justice and of the SC itself.”
The NUPL, through its acting secretary-general Edre Olalia, said Mrs. Arroyo would certainly face legal problems for “lingering charges of unbridled graft and corruption, rampant human rights violations, and midnight contracts.”
“The teaching of history and experience is that the chief justice is key and crucial in the positions and opinions of the Court notwithstanding the professional origins and political orientation of some or all of its other members,” the NUPL said.
“The Court, especially the chief justice, must not be tainted with any suspicion of partiality or bias. And it would be unfair for the chief justice appointed to be placed in such a situation,” it added.
“A Damocles’ sword is thus left hanging over the heads of whoever will be nominated or wish to be nominated,” it said.
“The NUPL believes that the outgoing President is quivering in her knees and is so desperate that naming and appointing a new chief justice that she expects - rightly or wrongly - to steer the SC to take her side and rescue is an offer she cannot simply refuse.”
Carpio hit
Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez twitted Carpio for setting a condition for his nomination, saying he knew from the start he would not get Mrs. Arroyo’s appointment.
“He knows the President will proceed in naming the next chief justice and it would probably not be him but Justice (Renato) Corona or somebody else, especially after he gave such an unsavory statement,” Suarez said.
Carpio, the most senior justice after Puno, informed the JBC - the screening committee of the judiciary headed by the SC chief - that he welcomes the nomination, but on the condition that he gets his appointment from the next president and not from Mrs. Arroyo.
Mrs. Arroyo and Carpio had a falling out in 2006 when then Defense Secretary Avelino “Nonong” Cruz resigned from the Cabinet.
Cruz is a senior associate of Carpio’s law firm, along with former Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo.
Sources disclosed that the President does not want to appoint the 60-year-old Carpio, who will outlive the six-year term of the next president. He will reach the mandatory retirement age of 70 on Oct. 26, 2020. It is an open secret that Carpio dislikes the First Family.
Corona, who retires on Oct. 15, 2019, is known to be friendly to Mrs. Arroyo and her family.
The next president will serve for six years or until June 2016.
By tradition, the president appoints the most senior associate justice to be chief justice. But Mrs. Arroyo deviated from this when she appointed Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban, even when Puno was the most senior. Puno nevertheless succeeded Panganiban.
Meantime, Suarez, chairman of the House committee on oversight, said it would be up to the JBC to decide to whom it would submit its shortlist of nominees for the post of chief justice.
“I don’t think the JBC will proceed with the selection process if it does not think President Arroyo has the authority to appoint Puno’s successor,” he said.
“The mere action by the JBC to start preparing the shortlist and eventually submit the same to the President are an indication that she may not be violating any law,” he added.
See:
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=545394&publicationSubCategoryId=63
ADDENDUM:
Lawyer seeks to delay SC ruling on chief justice’s successor
By Dona Pazzibugan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 16:19:00 02/24/2010
MANILA, Philippines—An official of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines has sought to delay the Supreme Court's ruling on whether President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo can appoint the next chief justice during the elections ban.
Lawyer Peter Irving Corvera, president of the IBP chapter in Pasay, Parañaque, Las Piñas and Muntinlupa, asked the Supreme Court to dismiss a petition filed earlier that asked the high court to make a ruling.
According to Corvera, the Judicial and Bar Council has not yet come up with a shortlist of nominees to be submitted to Malacañang and therefore, no justiciable controversy exists as of this point.
In his motion to intervene in the petition earlier filed by lawyer Arturo De Castro, Corvera also argued that the President could not make an appointment until Puno’s retirement on May 17.
The Constitution bans further appointments starting March 11 or two months from the May 10, 2010 presidential and national elections and until the end of President Macapagal-Arroyo’s term on June 30, 2010.
But in his petition, De Castro claimed that the appointments ban did not cover appointments in the judiciary.
Corvera, on the other hand, insisted that “the constitutional ban on appointments applies to all kinds of appointments including those in the judiciary.”
See:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20100224-255126/Lawyer-seeks-to-delay-SC-ruling-on-chief-justices-successor
