Carpio looking for CJ post

Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio has accepted his automatic nomination to the post of Chief Justice

vacated by Teresita Leonardo-De Castro who retired last week.

The Supreme Court public information office, quoting Carpio’s head of staff, lawyer Teresa Sibulo, said Carpio

had already sent his acceptance letter to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC).

The JBC is the constitutional body tasked to screen and vet nominees for top positions in the judiciary and the

Office of the Ombudsman. The council must come up with at least three nominees, from which the President will make his pick.

But another senior member of the high court, Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo, declined his automatic nomination.

Del Castillo ‘honored’

In his Oct. 12 letter to the JBC, Del Castillo said he was “honored” to be nominated but “[m]y compulsory

retirement next year compels me to respectfully decline the nomination.”

“I foresee that, as chair of the 2018 bar examinations, my work will extend to the months just prior to my retirement,” he said.

Del Castillo and Carpio will reach the compulsory retirement age of 70 on July 29 and Oct. 26 next year, respectively.

Automatic nomination

The high court five senior judges naturally name to an opening in the situation of Chief Justice, subject to the accommodation of a composed acknowledgment of selection.

Beside Carpio and Del Castillo, the other three senior judges are Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin and Estela Perlas-Bernabe.

Peralta and Bersamin, who have both acknowledged their designations,  additionally met the JBC as programmed chosen people for the Chief Justice post following the ouster of Maria Lourdes Sereno on June 19.

Carpio declined to assigned in August, saying he would not like to profit by Sereno’s ouster since he couldn’t help contradicting the larger part choice invalidating Sereno’s arrangement through a quo warranto request.

Nonetheless, he wrote as he would like to think that Sereno’s continued nonfiling of her announcements of benefits, liabilities and total assets comprised an at fault infringement of the Constitution and disloyalty of open trust, which are justification for indictment.

Carpio has additionally been a blunt faultfinder of the Duterte organization’s remote approach on the West Philippine Sea.