Another Sandiganbayan ex-chief could replace Ombudsman

Special Prosecutor Edilberto Sandoval is the second former Sandiganbayan top magistrate to be in the running to replace outgoing Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales.

Sandoval applied for the position before the Judicial and Bar Council last May 3 by himself. He said he refused offers from people to nominate him.

On Tuesday evening, he became the first prospective candidate to announce his intention to vie for the position to be vacated when Morales’s seven-year term ends on July 26.

“I don’t want to be nominated. Just in case a public officer nominates me, I would be beholden,” he told reporters at the sidelines of the Joint Forum on Justice and Integrity by the Office of the Ombudsman and the International Development Law Organization.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-de Castro was earlier reported to have been nominated on May 3 by retired Associate Justice Arturo Brion. But as of press time, she was not reported to have accepted the nomination and formalized his intention to be a candidate.

De Castro was the presiding justice of the Sandiganbayan from December 2004 to December 2007, when she was promoted to the Supreme Court, months after convicting former President Joseph Estrada for plunder in September 2007. She will retire this Oct. 8 upon reaching the age of 70.

Sandoval, meanwhile, twice served as an acting presiding justice from February 2004 to December 2004 and from December 2007 to March 2008. He finally became presiding justice from April 2010 to October 2011.

Currently, he is the head of the Office of the Special Prosecutor, the Ombudsman’s prosecutorial arm that handles high-profile corruption cases such as the pork barrel scam cases.

In the same forum on Tuesday evening, Morales did not endorse any prospective candidate. When asked about De Castro’s nomination by Brion, Morales simply said: “For as long as a person is not disqualified, he or she can be nominated.”

But, Morales, whom President Duterte had accused of selective prosecution, said that the next Ombudsman “has to be impervious to pressure [and] has to have integrity.”

“You may be the brightest fellow in the world, but if you don’t have integrity, then forget it. You have to have confidence and you have to have integrity,” she said.