MANILA – Three senior Supreme Court associate justices were shortlisted to replace sacked chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.
Associate justices Teresita De Castro, Diosdado Peralta and Lucas Bersamin were chosen following deliberations made by the six-member Judicial and Bar Council (JBC).
According to SC spokesmanTheodore Te, De Castro and Peralta received six votes each while Bersamin had five.
Their names were submitted to President Rodrigo Duterte.
De Castro, Peralta and Bersamin were among the eight associate justices who voted for the ouster of Sereno. They were also recently slapped with impeachment complaints for such action.
Department of Justice secretary Menardo Guevarra, however, said the impeachment complaint against the three will not affect their nomination for the high court’s chief magistrate position.
“The impeachment complaint is not yet considered an impeachment case, until it is affirmatively acted upon by the appropriate house committee,” Guevarra, an ex-officio member of the JBC said.
In an 8-6 voting on May 11, the SC justices have granted the quo warranto petition against Sereno as they believed that her appointment as SC Chief Justice was void from the start because of her failure to file her statements of assets, liabilities and net worth./PN
