Business Circuit

It is plain cowardice for the members of the Judicial and Bar Council to deny that Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita wrote them a letter asking for more names to the list of candidates for associate justices of the Supreme Court. They will fill the vacancies left by the retirement of Associate Justices Dante O. Tinga and Alicia Martinez.

The alleged denial was relayed to me by a source in the JBC.

Simple logic tells any halfwit that if there was no letter, it would have been the alleged sender who would make the denial. But Ermita has not said one word whether or not he sent the letter.

The letter, I am told, is in the safekeeping of Chief Justice Reynato Puno, ex-officio chairman of the JBC. He does not say a word about the letter either.

There have been extensive discussions in media about the letter. Neither the JBC nor Ermita admitted or denied the letter.

All of a sudden, my source in the JBC said, the council denies that Ermita sent a letter. The President has not appointed two candidates among the six nominees sent by the JBC.

The possibility is the receipt of the letter is now being denied because it embarrassed the President. Which means she will fill the two vacancies. This is conspiracy to cover a fraud.

On several occasions, I explained that the reality is the President is the JBC. One major reason I have for saying so is the authority given to the President to return or reject all of the nominees of the JBC.

The rejection means the President has her own idea on who to appoint. She will keep on returning the list of nominees to the JBC until that name appears.

In no time, the President will send word on which name to send to her for appointment.

The JBC will oblige her. That makes the council worse than a doormat. That is the best proof that while the council is independent under the Constitution, it has never really been independent precisely because the JBC is a legal cover of the President to appoint anybody she favors.

The council, as many have observed, must be abolished. The Commission on Appointments must be restored so that nominees of the President may be run through the coals, turn them inside out before their appointments are confirmed. The JBC merely goes into conducting hearings but never asks embarrassing or searching questions.

The main purpose of the JBC is to insulate the judiciary from politics. The truth is it is the JBC that has politicized the judiciary. The proof is for everybody to see. It is apparent in the complexion of the members of the judiciary including the Supreme Court.

The JBC can be independent instead of being subservient, if it wants to. The fact that the members of the council are appointed by the President should not deny them that independence.

The members of the JBC must have the balls to go eyeball-to-eyeball with the President. In the end the President will blink. It will be shamed by the JBC.

This can happen because the law says that the President must fill a vacant position in the Supreme Court within 90 days from the time the post became vacant.

This means that the JBC can resend the list of the nominees to the vacancy rejected by the President.

Let the JBC and the President go into a war of attrition. In the present case, the JBC should not add any more nominees apart from those it sent to the President.

The President returned the list, and the JBC should resend it. The situation becomes a tug of war. But the President has to act, meaning pick one in the list submitted by the JBC, in 90 days.

In other words, the President has a time limit. The JBC does not. It does not want to fight either.

The refusal to be independent makes the JBC a willing tool of the President.

It has begun to tell on the courts, including the Supreme Court.

Ruel Canobas, commissioner of the National Telecommunications Commission, is a highly respected professional who probably needs the job. He had to resign last week.

He could no longer stomach the pressure brought upon him by powerful people. They are asking him for many things, notably frequencies, which in his honest opinion should not be granted.

His case is similar to former NTC Commissioner Pope Solis. He had just been elected president of the World Telecommunications Association. As a reward he was asked to resign. But he jumped the gun on the President. He quit before he could be told to leave the post.

The President and her boys did not like Solis because he was recommended by the law firm of Carpio Villaraza, now known as CVC law or The Firm. The firm ceded about a dozen lawyers to the Arroyo government.

They left one by one, unable to stand the pressure to do wrong. Avelino J. Cruz, former chief legal counsel of the president and former secretary of national defense, was one of them.

Canoba and Solis stood their ground, the right ground. Expect the next commissioner to be an order taker.

If one president cannot be half as honorable as his or her predecessor, the next best thing to do is deny them a small badge of honor – state-provided security guards. That’s what Gloria Arroyo did two weeks ago to her supporter-turned tormentor. She ordered the withdrawal of security officers assigned to President Fidel V. Ramos.

The worst came when the President ordered the withdrawal of the two security officers assigned to President Cory Aquino when she was hovering between life and death at the Makati Medical Center.

Ferdinand Marcos never even thought of denying state security officers to a former president and political enemy, Dioadado Macapagal, father of Gloria Macaraeg Macapagal Arroyo.

Ramos saved Gloria from the Hyatt 10. He lent her his support in her most crucial hour. It was a mistake that Ramos acknowledged in a different manner. He asked Gloria to give it straight to the people. Is she extending her term or not?

That got her goat. A small token of displeasure, she ordered the withdrawal of security officers assigned to Ramos.