President Benigno Aquino III
President Benigno Aquino III assured the nation that the next Chief Justice will be the “best” for the country and will be “no lapdog.”
In an ANC interview before Christmas Day, the President took issue with Corona’s recent speech where the latter slammed him for supposedly wanting to appoint a new Chief Justice that he could hold by the neck.
The President told ANC anchor Lynda Jumilla that in the search for a new Chief Justice his criteria would not include that the candidate follow Palace orders.
“Getting a lapdog is not and has never been part of the concept that exists in our family.”
“At the end of the day, whoever I appoint I would have to be able to look at any of our countrymen and say: ‘This is the best.’”
Mr. Aquino also reiterated why his administration wanted a change in the leadership of the Supreme Court, currently headed by impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona.
He said it was wrong for any branch of government to be “untouchable.”
“I never thought I’d quote him (but it was) Senator Arturo Tolentino who said quite a long while back that he was nervous about the autonomy…the growing power of the Supreme Court….There might come a point wherein it was no longer effectively being checked and balanced by the other two co-equal branches,” President Aquino continued.
Tolentino was a close ally of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and once served as vice president to the latter for a brief time before the first people power revolt catapulted the President’s mother, the late Corazon Aquino, to the presidency.
Asked whether he thought the country was at a point where the high court had too much autonomy and independence that it was now untouchable, he replied: “It’s at a point where no one…in practice nobody could review what they (the high court) has done.”
“It seems no one challenges whether (or not the Supreme Court decisions) are right. Could their perception be right? And I think I made public the issues that we find disagreement with,” he said.
Corona’s impeachment trial, he said, was a “step embodied in the Constitution which resolves a conflict of this nature.”
Meanwhile, Supreme Court administrator and spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez on Wednesday criticized President Aquino for being “presumptuous and arrogant” in ordering his legal advisers to look for a would-be successor to Chief Justice Corona.
In a press briefing, Marquez reminded Malacañang that the Constitution explicitly states that only the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) was authorized to screen and select candidates for justices of the high tribunal.
No vacancy in SC
“Let’s not be too presumptuous and arrogant. There is no vacancy (in the Supreme Court). I think that’s very clear,” Marquez told reporters.
“Perhaps we can practice some degree of humility. Nothing is lost when we are humble,” he added.
On Tuesday, Palace spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said the President had directed his legal team to list the possible replacements for Corona, who was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 12.
Lacierda said Mr. Aquino “needs someone of the likes of Maylou Sereno,” referring to Associate Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, the President’s first appointee to the high court and one of the dissenting votes in the recent Supreme Court decision to allow former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to leave the country.
A former national president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), lawyer Jose Grapilon, on Wednesday said the search for Corona’s replacement even before the Senate could start the impeachment trial seemed “not proper.” Grapilon, however, signed a manifesto along with other legal luminaries in support of the impeachment process because “no one in public service is a sacred cow.”
But Senator Gregorio Honasan saw no problem with President Aquino’s search for Corona’s replacement. Mr. Aquino had the “prerogative” to have a short list of prospective candidates for Chief Justice in the event Corona was ousted, he said.
Honasan said a bigger concern was whether or not Mr. Aquino had a clear plan and vision for the country. “I hope he has a clear plan, where to bring all this in the long run.”
House leaders were more forthright in their support for President Aquino. With reports from Christian Esguerra and Gil Cabacungan