ISN'T PNOY ABUSING HIS POWER TO APPOINT?

"Aquino names Palace official to replace De Lima in JBC" -- news!  Teka, is that allowable under the Constitution.

I am not a lawyer, much less a Constitutional expert.  But one need not be such, he only needs to read the Constitution, to understand that the Constitution itself that created the Judicial and Bar Council (Section 8, Article VIII), providing at the same time its composition, appointment of their members, its functions, with the primary objective of making the appointment of members of the Supreme Court  less political than what it was perceived to be under the 1973 Constitution. 

It will be recalled that under the previous charter, only the President was involved in the appointment of high officials of the government, including members of the judiciary.  There was then no effective remedy in case of abuse by the President of his appointing power. In fact, the situation as a deemed better under the 1935 Constitution.

The members of the Supreme Court used to be appointed by the President subject to confirmation by the Commission on Appointments in Congress. However, this power of Congress to confirm all appointments to the judiciary was deemed to be a source of political haggling and horse trading, in turn affecting the judicial independence of the appointees.   Hence the creation, under the present charter, of the Judicial and Bar Council.

Under the auspices of the JBC,  the selection of Supreme Court Justices requires the participation of the three equal branches of the government, because it is composed of the Chief Justice as ex officio Chairman, the Secretary of Justice  and a representative of the Congress as ex officio Members, a representative of the Integrated Bar, a professor of law, a retired Member of the Supreme Court, and a representative of the private sector.

As things are, since each one of the above seven members of the JBC is entitled to one vote each, the Executive Branch may be said as having a distinct advantage over the Legislative and Judicial branches in the selection of the Justices.  That is, each one of the the Judiciary and the Legislature has only one vote each: the Chief Justice and the representative of Congress, whereas the Executive Branch has very clearly five votes, i.e. those of the Secretary of Justice and the four regular members from civil or private sector, each one of whom are presidential appointees and must therefore be only expected to be beholden to the President.

Be that as it may, given the inclusion of Acting CJ Antonio Carpio and DOJ Secretary Leila De Lima in the list of nominees for the next CJ and, hence, their inhibition from the JBC,  the new complexion of the votes has become zero for the Judiciary, one for the Legislative and four for the Judiciary.  The thing is, the President still appears to want to preserve the Executive's five votes by appointing De Lima's temporary replacement in the JBC.  If this is not an abuse of the presidential power to appoint, I do not know what else is.