No one — especially a nominee to the post of Supreme Court chief justice — after not being qualified for the post, will insist, over and over again to be taken in and be qualified by a body.
The reason is that after a body’s disqualification of a candidate, or nominee, the individual disqualified that continues to beg to be qualified five times over, loses a lot of respect as such begging demeans him.
But not Justice Secretary Leila de Lima who again made a “final appeal” to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) to give her a “fair chance” at being nominated to the post of chief justice.
De Lima was reported to have sent a fifth letter to the JBC, claiming to have raised new arguments on why she should be considered by the body for the post of CJ.
According to the JBC rules, any nominee who has a pending administrative or criminal case leveled against the nominee is automatically disqualified.
Of course De Lima keeps on arguing that the disbarment cases against her should not be a bar for her to be qualified for membership to the high court, an argument which has been rehashed and does not fly, on account of the fact that the JBC, in the past, has disqualified other nominees for the post of associate justice of the SC precisely because of that JBC rule.
Is De Lima now saying that rules should be broken, or at least be bent for her, since she says she should not be disqualified?
As she put it in her letter, a nominee that has no pending regular administrative or criminal cases is not among the qualifications for membership in the SC stated in the Constitution, as she pointed out that the Charter’s requirements.
Of course when it comes to “proven competence, integrity, probity and independence,” De Lima had the incredible chutzpah to claim that it is she who has the proven competence, integrity, probity and independence and that the JBC in essence would not be honoring the constitutional requirements to select her.
She even went to the extent of telling the JBC that it would be doing the Filipino people an injustice to bar her, as she will be denied to give justice to every Filipino.
Wow. What a megalomaniac De Lima must have become to describe herself with such lofty characteristics. Only she can give every Filipino justice, especially when she is known to come up with weak cases merely to frame a political foe of her boss, Noynoy?
Proven competence in interpreting the law, as ruled by the SC — a law moreover that she, a lawyer and an officer of the court refused to obey a temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the high court, and instead believes to this day, that her hold departure order disguised as a watch list order is the higher law?
She insisted that the disbarment complaint against her was in relation to her duties as Justice secretary and an alter-ego of the President when she refused to obey an SC TRO preventing her from stopping Gloria Arroyo from leaving the country, arguing further that, as she is an alter-ego of the President, was merely executing the instructions of the President, and therefore should “partake of his privilege of immunity from suit.”
Good grief! She now wants to be cloaked with the same presidential immunity from suit.
God help the Filipinos if by any stroke of presidential pressure (which is clearly ongoing in the JBC) her name will appear in the JBC and she is to be appointed as CJ, because her logic and what the law really means are completely shot.
But what is obvious is that Noynoy, through his legal aides, are putting the pressure on the JBC to favor De Lima.
She would not demean herself all that low unless Noynoy is behind her many pleas and presidential pressure for her inclusion in the JBC list.
It’s time for De Lima and her idol, Noynoy, to call it quits.