SC affirms validity ruling on Econg’s appointment

The Supreme Court (SC) has affirmed its ruling on the validity of the appointment of former Cebu City judge Geraldine Faith Econg and former Malacañang undersecretary for special concerns Michael Frederick Musngi as associate justices of the Sandiganbayan last year.

The SC’s en banc denied for lack of merit the motion for reconsideration filed by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), who claimed that former president Benigno Aquino III violated the Constitution when he appointed the two last January without following the rules for appointments.

“All the basic issues raised in the petition had been thoroughly passed upon by the Court in its decision dated Nov. 29, 2016,” read the SC’s en banc resolution penned by Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-Castro.

IBP National President Rosario Setias-Reyes had said that Aquino should have chosen one from each of the list of nominees from the Judicial and Bar Council ( JBC) for every vacancy in the judiciary.

After signing into law Republic Act 10660, or the Act Strengthening Further the Functional and Structural Organization of the Sandiganbayan, Aquino named six new justices to the Sandiganbayan in January 2016.

The JBC’s nominees were Philip Aguinaldo, Reynaldo Alhambra, Danilo Cruz, Benjamin Pozon, Danilo Sandoval, and Salvador Timbang Jr.

Aquino, though, chose the 16th member of the Sandiganbayan from the candidates endorsed by the JBC for the 21st justice of the Sandiganbayan: Econg, Musngi, Wilhelmina Jorge-Wagan, Rosanna Fe Romero-Maglaya, Merian Pacita Zuraek, Elmo Alameda and Victoria Fernandez-Bernardo.

IBP said public funds were “il- legally disbursed, deflected to an improper use, or wasted through the enforcement of an invalid or unconstitutional law.”

Aquino, through the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), sought the dismissal of the petition on procedural and substantive grounds.

Econg, for her part, said the petitioners had “no clear, unquestionable franchise” merely because they had been included in the shortlist submitted for the president’s consideration.

In the decision, the SC ruled that Aquino’s appointment of Econg and Musngi to the Sandiganbayan was valid.

The JBC, in its motion for reconsideration, argued that Aquino’s act of submitting six lists for six vacancies was unconstitutional.

The JBC said that its six short lists for six vacancies heeded Article 8, Section 93 of the 1987 Constitution.