Malacañang appears to have shifted its lobbying ways from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) that kept President Aquino’s  top choice for the top judicial bench disbarment cases alive, to lobbying in the Judicial and Bar Council, as Justice Secretary Leila de Lima insists  on her inclusion in the shortlist for  the Chief Justice position to be submitted to Malacañang by the JBC, which has already said a pending administrative complaint automatically disqualifies a nominee for consideration.
In an 11-page letter to the collegial body, De Lima said that the JBC’s exclusion of her from the shortlist would be a great disservice to the country.
“If the undersigned will not hazard this passionate plea, and persuade the Council to the justness of her cause, then she has no business hoping to give justice to every Filipino as Chief Justice,” she said.
In her Aug. 2, 2012 letter to the JBC, De Lima cited five grounds as basis on why she should not be disqualified as a nominee for the post of chief magistrate.
De Lima said  when she had observed before the media that the “insiders” have an edge over “outsiders” in the selection of the Chief Justice, she did not think that it would be in terms of how the fate of her disbarment case would heavily rest upon the discretion of her co-nominees in the SC.
Complaints filed against her by Ricardo Rivera, Fernando Perito and Nephtali Aliposa cannot be ground for her disqualification, De Lima claimed.
She said that the SC could easily dispose of the Rivera and Perito disbarment case against her by finally acting on the issue of her alleged defiance of the SC’s temporary restraining order (TRO) in the watchlist order (WLO) against former President and now Pampanga (2nd District) Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo since the SC’s own show cause order that started it all remains with the jurisdiction of the SC.
De Lima also accused the IBP  of a double standard and resolving expeditiously administrative charges against two SC justices but delaying its resolution of the cases against her.
De Lima virtually denounced the SC justices by saying  that magistrates of the high court “are always in a better position than ordinary lawyers in terms of the disposition of administrative cases that threaten to disqualify them.”
She specifically cited the dismissal last June 13 of the disbarment complaint filed by Mayor Magdaleno Peña of Pulupandan town in Negros Occidental against Justices Carpio and Sereno.
“In the first place, as a rule, it is really the Court which decides cases for disbarment against lawyers and as such, said lawyers, even if they happen to be candidates for the top post of the judiciary, invariably find themselves at the mercy of the Court,” she stated.
“While the undersigned finds herself powerless in the face of the six-month lag in the referral of her disbarment cases to the IBP, not to mention the eight-month inaction in the show cause order the Court itself initiated against her, the