The Senator in the News

6 December 2006
From Inq7.net

SANTIAGO PRESSES FIGHT VS SUPREME COURT

By Juliet Labog-Javellana
Published on page A2 of the December 6, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

PURSUING her fight against the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) which had dropped her from its list of candidates for Supreme Court Chief Justice, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago yesterday urged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo not to appoint a permanent replacement for Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban but a temporary one when the latter retires tomorrow.

In a letter to the President, which she read into the Senate record, Santiago said Ms Arroyo should appoint an acting Chief Justice because the judiciary’s nomination process was a failure and was tainted with corruption.

Santiago was to take her battle to Malacañang last night, where she was to meet with the President.

Santiago also advised Ms Arroyo not to appoint Associate Justice Reynato Puno Chief Justice, despite the latter being the most senior of the four candidates for the position.

“If you were to appoint Mr. Puno, the public will suspect -- with good reason -- that he had unlawfully promised to decide in favor of the administration the controversial imminent case on the constitutionality of a constituent assembly (Con-ass). Thus, the Supreme Court and the constituent assembly would both lose all credibility,” Santiago said.

The woman senator was referring to the battle for Con-ass in Congress that the Arroyo administration was still fighting for in order to amend the Constitution despite having lost the case in the Panganiban Supreme Court.

Santiago instead suggested that an incumbent justice who was not on the short list of nominees be appointed acting Chief Justice until a “valid nomination process” could be undertaken. She said she would withdraw her own nomination if there were such another screening.

“I will ask the President when I see her [tonight] to appoint an acting Chief Justice. I’m going to tell her the JBC has lost all logic, all reason (for its existence),” Santiago told reporters.

On Monday, a seething Santiago had made mincemeat of Panganiban and the JBC in a cardiac-inducing privilege speech after the JBC had dropped her and Justice Antonio Carpio from the short list of nominees for Chief Justice.

A furious Santiago tagged Panganiban as the mastermind of a “thinly-veiled” plot to drop her from contention because she was a Supreme Court outsider. She said she was also excluded because ex-Senate President Jovito Salonga, Panganiban’s former boss, was Ms Arroyo’s nemesis.

In her letter to the President, Santiago told Ms Arroyo the nomination process was attended by irregularities and should be repeated.

She narrated how Panganiban had forced her to waive her public interview by the JBC after the five incumbent justices who were also candidates refused to submit to the process.

“I did not spontaneously waive my right … I was compelled to do so,” she said, adding that after she did not go through with the interview, the eight JBC members went to see her in the holding room to thank her for her “cooperation.”

Senate Majority Leader Francis Pangilinan and Senator Edgardo Angara, however, expressed reservations about Santiago’s proposal to appoint an acting Chief Justice.

Pangilinan, ex-officio member of the JBC, said having an acting Chief Justice would place him or her in a situation where pressure could be applied on them by Malacañang if they wanted to keep their jobs.

Angara said there was no precedent for an acting Chief Justice and this should be avoided for the sake of stability in the judiciary.

For its part, Supreme Court spokesperson Ismael Khan Jr. said the high tribunal was unfazed by Santiago’s tirade because the court was more credible than the senator.

Khan said the court would rather leave it to the public to decide on Santiago’s accusations.

“Well, it will depend on how the public will react to that,” he said.

Admitting Santiago’s remarks were “uncalled for,” including describing members of the tribunal as “idiots,” Khan said the Supreme Court was not bound to react on them because they were uttered during a privilege speech delivered in the Senate.

“Whether the court feels maligned or not, it will depend on how the people will take it,” he said. With Armand N. Nocum

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The Senator in the News

5 December 2006
From Inq7.net

SANTIAGO SLAMS JBC, SC AFTER BEING DROPPED FROM SHORTLIST

By Juliet Labog-Javellana
Posted date: December 04, 2006

SENATOR Miriam Defensor-Santiago is well-known as someone who does not mince words but on Monday she hit a new low.

After learning that she had been removed from the shortlist of candidates for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, she lost no time lambasting the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) which had removed her name from contention, called the present high court members idiots and corrupt, and said she was spitting in the face of retiring Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban and his mentor, former senator Jovito Salonga, for conspiring against her.

In a bright yellow dress, Santiago blew into the Senate like Supertyphoon “Reming” on Monday, and delivered a scathing privilege speech attacking the JBC and the Supreme Court.

“I’m not angry, Mr. President, I am not angry,” she began, addressing Senate President Manuel Villar.

“I am irate. I am foaming at the mouth. I’m homicidal. I’m suicidal. I’m humiliated, debased, degraded. And not only that, I feel like throwing up to be living my middle years in a country of this nature. I am nauseated. I spit in the face of Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban and his cohorts in the Supreme Court.”

Only minutes earlier, Santiago, unaware the JBC had decided to drop her nomination, learned of it when the Inquirer contacted her while she was in her car on the way to the Senate.

“Is that so?” she said.

“I will say that I resent it very deeply. I take it very personally and I will see to it that while I remain in public office that every member of the JBC shall eventually be held to account for their partisanship. For this reason, I will participate in the Con-ass (constituent assembly) for the main purpose of abolishing the JBC for corruption,” she told the Inquirer.

She also made a manifestation on the floor that the Supreme Court’s budget be reduced to its 2005 level.

Santiago said Panganiban was the “mastermind of this thinly veiled plot” to exclude her from the nomination process because she was an “intimate political ally of the President.”

She challenged the SC, which she charged had manipulated the JBC, to point to any provision in the Constitution that said an outsider could not be appointed Chief Justice.

“Wala naman sa loob ng ating saligang batas, saan nila kinuha ang kapal ng mukha nila na magsabi na ang mga sarili lang nila ang maaring Chief Justice ng korte suprema (Where in the law of the land did they get their thick-skinned idea that only Supreme Court justices could be Chief Justice)?” she said.

Santiago said Panganiban was against her because his former boss, Salonga, was against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and wanted her [Santiago] out of the picture for being the Chief Executive’s ally.

She said Panganiban had even ordered her to waive her public interview by the JBC to save face for the five incumbent justices who had refused to submit to the interviews.

She said Panganiban had asked Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez to tell her to tell the media that she was waiving the interview.

“This Chief Justice, this twisted mind, sent Secretary Gonzalez to me so that their colleagues in the Supreme Court would not be subjected to the scrutiny of the public,” she said.

Santiago also questioned Panganiban’s own qualifications to be Chief Justice, saying that he was also an outsider.

“Pinagmamalaki ng Chief Justice na ito na naging bar topnotcher siya. Ha, ha, ha,” Santiago said, adding that bar topnotchers in the United States were laughed at because this meant they were not doing substantial legal work since they had plenty of time to review for the bar exams.

Santiago said she simply wanted to be nominated to the high court to disabuse the public of the myth that only court insiders could become Chief Justice.

“I said categorically to the President that I could not be appointed Chief Justice because I preferred the company of my colleagues in the Senate anytime, any day, any year to the company of those idiots in the Supreme Court,” she said.

“If the Filipino people thought that I was good enough to be president of the republic in 1992 were it not for the devilish and satanic machinations of the septuagenarian (former president Fidel V. Ramos) yet the JBC turned its back on public opinion. Who of them graduated with honors from UP? Let them take the law school aptitude test and let’s see if they will pass,” she said.

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The Senator in the News

From The Philippine Daily Inquirer, 22 November 2006

NOMINATION OF 4 BETS FOR CHEIF JUSTICE OPPOSED

By Juliet Labog-Javellana

The Judicial and Bar Council has received opposition to the nomination of four of the six candidates for the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, according to Senate majority Leader Francis Pangilinan.

Pangilinan, ex-officio member of the JBC which screens nominations to the judiciary, said oppositors have submitted position papers against Associate Justices Reynato Puno, Consuelo Ynares-Santiago and Leonardo Quisumbing and Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago so far.

The other two nominees are Associate Justices Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez and Antonio Carpio.

Pangilinan said the filing of opposition against the nominees was part of the screening process. The JBC is deliberating on the nominees, one of whom will be chosen by President Macapagal-Arroyo to succeed Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban who is set to retire on Dec. 7. The JBC is mandated to submit a short list of at least three names to the President.

Panganiban said the JBC met on Monday and tackled this proposal to conduct public interviews of the nominees to ensure greater transparency in the selection process.

He said the eight-member panel failed to agree on his proposal and is set to meet again tomorrow.

“I think the majority sentiment (in the JBC) is for public interviews but some of our collegues are looking at the position of the Supreme Court (against it),” Pangilinan said.

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