A TOTAL of 16 individuals, including Solicitor General Florin Hilbay and Justice Secretary Benjamin Caguioa, are vying for the position to be vacated by Associate Justice Martin Villarama Jr. who will retire in January next year.
Hilbay and Caguioa are among the applicants and recommendees who will be screened by the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC).
The seven-man JBC is the constitutional body tasked to accept nominations and applications, screen and come up with a short list of nominees for vacancies in the Judiciary and the Office of the Ombudsman.
The JBC earlier set the deadline for application and nomination for the post on November 23, while the deadline for submission of supporting documents of nominations was set on December 8.
The public interview of the candidates is likely to be conducted in January.
Aside from Hilbay and Caguioa, other candidates for the post are Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang; Court of Appeals (CA) Presiding Justice Andres Reyes Jr.; Sandiganbayan Associate Justices Maria Cristina Cornejo and Alex Quiroz; CA Associate Justices Apolinario, Rosmari Carandang, Mariflor Castillo and Stephen Cruz; former Commission on Audit Chairman Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan; Chief State Counsel Ricardo Paras III; Deputy Ombudsman for Luzon Gerard Mosquera; Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Reynaldo Daway; Party-list Rep. Cinchona Cruz-Gonzales of Citizens’ Battle Against Corruption; and private practitioner Joe-Santos Bisquera (Bisquera Balagtas Law Center).
JBC member Jose Mejia earlier said the JBC could come up with a short list by February, which means President Aquino may be able to name his sixth appointee to the Supreme Court (SC) before the period covered by the election ban on midnight appointments.
Posts in the SC, however, are exempted from the ban per the Court’s 2010 ruling for the vacancy with the retirement of then-Chief Justice Reynato Puno, which President Aquino had questioned.
It can be recalled that in 2010, the SC came out with a ruling exempting the appointment for the vacancy in the Court from the election ban.
Villarama cited his double-knee metal implantation in 2013 and his cataract operation in 2014 as the reasons for the deterioration of his health.
Villarama started serving the judiciary in 1970 as a technical assistant in the SC.
He rose from the ranks to become a RTC judge in 1986, then a CA associate justice in 1998 and finally a SC associate justice in 2009.