Supreme Court insider and not outsider for Chief Justice

The Judicial Bar Council

The Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) is about finished interviewing nominees for Chief Justice (CJ) and will soon go on with the selection process as to whose names will be submitted to choose from by President Benigno Aquino (PNoy).

This, even as Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Sonny Belmonte, as well as Senate committee on justice chairman Senator Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero and his House counterpart Rep. Niel Tupas agreed to pull out of the JBC following a SC ruling allowing only one representation from Congress to JBC.

But, even without Congress participating, and no matter how flawed JBC may be in its composition, as seen by Enrile, it has a role to play as a constitutionally-created body that recommends appointees for vacancies that may arise in the composition of the Supreme Court and other lower courts.

The question now is: Is JBC going to recommend a Supreme Court (SC) insider or an outsider?

So that the JBC members will not be accused of being biased for one or the other, it is a given that the recommended persons to be selected by President Aquino will be coming from both parties.

President Benigno Aquino

The question becomes critical and significant, and will determine the performance of the SC, when the same is asked of PNoy. It is important that he makes the right choice for it is one of the crucial legacies he will be leaving behind once he steps down from the presidency.

Among the candidates interviewed, it has been observed that most of those who were comfortable answering questions from the panel – more eloquent, more assertive, more confident, and seemingly more competent to occupy the position of CJ are the SC insiders, namely, Justice Antonio Carpio, Justice Presbitero Velasco Jr., Justice Teresita Leonardo de Castro, Justice Arturo Brion, Justice Roberto Abad and Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.

Not only is it advantageous to appoint a replacement for CJ from within, knowing already fully well the intricacies, the processes and even the politics inside, but they rightfully deserve to be the only group to be chosen from in as much as they earned their stay position through hard work and sacrifice, not to mention their intelligence and probity. In fact they are classified from the most junior to the most senior, with the latter given the preference.

Unfortunately, such is not the case today.

But, since they have reached that distinguished position of Associate Justice of the SC, would you robbed any of them now of the opportunity to fulfill their dream of heading that most coveted position in the judiciary, the CJ of the SC?

It is for this reason that, I hope, PNoy will be guided to appoint a SC insider for CJ.

It is only fair.

So, when should we be considering then SC outsiders for SC inside positions? The answer is – only when there is vacancy in the roster of Associate Justices.

It is only fair.

(Please read related article: Search for Corona’s replacement ,  dated June 23, 2012. – Quierosaber)

An able Chief Justice we will never have

 

Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio

Jack Welch, the outspoken former GE CEO and management guru, once said: “Control your own destiny or someone else will.”

This may have happen to many of us – that someone else has been able to alter the path that we wanted to follow. Not that it cannot be reverse using our will, but if it is somebody powerful and influential who has all the resources to redirect the way we want to go, somehow it makes you a failure to get where you want to be and to fight will only be an exercise in futility.

Such is the case of Associate Justice Antonio Carpio.

It is every lawyer-worth-his-salt’s dream to, one day, assume the leadership of the highest court of the land – the Supreme Court (SC) and Carpio did not only worked hard for it, but had the years poised to replace Chief Justice (CJ) Renato Puno upon the latter’s retirement on May 17, 2010.

Destiny would have been Carpio’s, but for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s (GMA) intervention, it was not meant to be.

GMA chose her yes man, Renato Corona.

It will be recalled that President Arroyo named Corona as SC associate justice on April 9, 2002. He was one of the youngest magistrates ever appointed to the high tribunal. Before that, he was President Arroyo’s chief of staff, spokesman, and acting executive secretary.

Though Carpio was also a GMA appointee, the former knew he could never be the latter’s choice as a check on previous Supreme Court rulings on controversial cases involving the Arroyo administration revealed that Corona usually voted in favor of the administration while Carpio voted against it.

The rest is history as everybody knew that with Corona at the helm, and with almost all of the members of the high court her appointees, she was assuredly clothed with legal protection if and when she bows out as president.

Or that was how she thought and believed it would be, until the shit hits the fan and she found herself confined to house and later to hospital arrest and Corona was not able to save her, nor Corona been able to save Corona himself.

So, what makes me say then that Carpio is an able CJ that we will never have?

Because, from the very beginning, and even while he was still a student, Carpio already showed the kind of person that he was.

“Let us not…delude ourselves into believing that a new constitution would immediately eradicate the ills that plague our country. Nor can we expect that tinkering with the constitution will totally purge it of its defects and make this nation great again…. One thing we cannot afford to overlook nor downgrade the importance of the human element. A basically workable constitution or law can become defective in the hands of enthroned rascals, as we are now experiencing,” wrote Antonio Tirol Carpio.

No, this was not written recently but was penned by him when he was a 20-year-old senior economics student of the Ateneo de Manila University in 1969. Published in The Guidon, of which Carpio was then editor in chief, the piece mirrored tumultuous times.

What he wrote then was providential, if not prophetic, for the injustices and societal inequities that he was fighting against during the Marcos regime continued throughout his career in law and the judiciary.

“The most important qualification of a judge is independence, not brilliance,” Carpio once told a former associate, and that explains his actuation in the SC.

Isn’t this what the SC justices are all about – has mastery of the law, has independence of mind, has delicadeza or high sense of propriety, has respect for the constitution, has unquestioned integrity, and is not a political stooge?

Alas, Carpio qualifies as an able CJ, but he will never be one.

Not during President Aquino’s watch.