CONSTITUTION expert Fr. Joaquin Bernas said Friday the Judicial and Bar Council must open its process of selecting nominees to the Supreme Court vacancies expected next year and the identities of those to be included in the short list to be submitted to President Gloria Arroyo should be publicized.
Bernas, former member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission and currently dean emeritus of the Ateneo Law School, challenged the public and the media to scrutinize legal provisions governing the JBC and its processes to help them better understand and appreciate the nominating body’s ongoings.
Emphatically noting the JBC selection and nomination processes should be open, Bernas said: “We have to be deliberate in our examination of our nominees. Are they politically and intellectually independent? You cannot be intellectually independent if you are not politically independent? You have to examine the political philosophies of the nominees, the decisions that they have made. It is not an easy thing to do…but it is an important process.”
“It is very important to choose people who are independent, men and women who follow rules, and not just loyalty,” he said, describing the case of Supreme Court Justice Cecilia Munoz Palma, who was appointed by then President Ferdinand Marcos, but ended up being a “great dissenter.”
Speaking at a forum that launched a civil-society-media-led watchdog Supreme Court Appointments Watch (SCAW) Citizens’ Search Committee, Bernas told Supreme Court officers and personnel, civil society leaders and media people “to study the rules of the JBC.”
“If you find anything objectionable, we can go to the Supreme Court and contest this,” he said.
Civil society groups, notably lawyers, are girding for the retirement of seven justices next year.
Scheduled to retire next year are Justices Ruben Reyes, Adolfo Azcuna, Dante Tinga, Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, Leonardo Quisumbing, and Minita Chico-Nazario. Justice Alicia Martinez, meanwhile, has opted for early retirement because of health reasons.
Of the seven, only Justices Ynares-Santiago and Quisumbing are not Arroyo appointees.
Legal experts have forecast that before Arroyo ends her term of office by 2010, she would have appointed 14 out of the 15 SC justices.
Vincent T. Lazatin, executive director of the Transparency and Accountability Network (TAN), a consortium of NGOs promoting good governance, told the forum, “In no time in our recent history has a single president had an opportunity, through his or her appointments, to decide the nature and character of the Supreme Court in just 12 months.”
Next to Ferdinand Marcos, who elected in 1965 and was ousted in February 1986 through a popular uprising, Arroyo is the second longest serving Philippine leader. While the Philippine Constitution only prescribes a one-term, six-year presidency, Arroyo is at the helm of power for almost 10 years because she had served the remaining tenure of office of Joseph Estrada, who was booted out of office in 2001.
In launching SCAW, Lazatin said, “We are here to help protect a vital institution of our democracy…It may sound overly dramatic, but we cannot overestimate the need for an independent and competent Supreme Court that will decide cases on the basis of its merits, and not on the basis of what will benefit the appointing power.”
The SCAW’s civil society search committee includes Bernas, former Court of Appeals Associate Justice Hilarion Aquino, University of the Philippines economic professor Solita Collas-Monsod, businessman Edward Go, former Ambassador to the US Albert del Rosario, Moro lawyer and development worker Raissa Jajurie, and law professor Andres Bautista, who is president and chairman of the Philippine Association of Law Schools. Professor Carmen Abubakar of the UP Institute of Islamic Studies may possibly join the team.
Lawyer Marlon Manuel, coordinator of the Alternative Law Group, called on the JBC members to release to the public and media their “voting patterns” when a shortlist is reached.
“We will push for public intervies (of the nominees). We will push for media’s access during the JBC interview of the nominees,” he said.