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LAST week, Arturo Brion was appointed associate justice of the
Supreme Court, taking over the slot left vacant by Associate Justice
Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez who retired from the SC last 27
February. Brion is the 12th Supreme Court justice appointed by
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and some quarters have insinuated that the
appointment was made in anticipation of a favorable vote on the
petition filed by Commission on Higher Education chairman Romulo
Neri against a Senate order for his arrest.
Neri, if you recall, has refused to make a
second appearance before the Senate hearing on the NBN-ZTE broadband
deal, saying he has already said what he can say and invoking
executive privilege on the things he claims he cannot testify on,
things which deal with the conversations he had with the President.
If you believe certain reports in the news, the
previous 14-man composition of the SC was evenly divided on the Neri
petition, and Brion could tilt the balance should he decide either
in favor or against.
As far as qualifications for the Supreme Court
post are concerned, however, I believe Brion is beyond reproach. He
has been nominated twice before to the SC and was a senior member of
the 15th Division of the Court of Appeals from June 2003 to June
2006.
He topped the Bar examinations of 1974 with a
grade of 91.65% after earning his law degree at the Ateneo
University. He graduated cum laude, was the class valedictorian and
the recipient of the Ateneo’s Gold Medal for Academic Excellence.
He first practiced law at the Siguion Reyna,
Montecillo and Ongsiako Law Office before he was recruited into
public service by Blas F. Ople in 1975. Ka Blas was then the labor
minister and he got Brion to work as executive director of the
Institute of Labor and Manpower Studies, the research, training and
policy formulation arm of the labor ministry.
Brion also practiced law in Canada, and even
worked as solicitor at the Legal Services Branch of the Ontario
Ministry of Labour and at the Ontario Management Board Secretariat.
He had a short stint in the Philippine
legislature, having been elected as assemblyman in 1984.
Brion taught law at the Ateneo University
College of Law and at the Far Eastern University Institute of Law.
His qualifications alone will not guarantee that
Brion’s conduct in the High Court will be defined by independence,
integrity and impartiality. But nothing really can, when you think
about it. There are no absolute guarantees. His record though is
rather unblemished and even the honorable senators did not question
this.
As Sen. Mar Roxas told ABS-CBN, Brion’s
appointment is well-deserved. “He has a clean record of public
service and is well-respected in legal circles. Given Justice
Brion’s unblemished record in public service, I am hopeful that he
will fulfill his new mandate competently, fairly and with absolute
fidelity to the Constitution. He should be given the opportunity to
prove himself true to his oath.”
I agree. And I can tell you this: I have known
Brion for quite some time now. And he is not a man who will allow
himself to be used as an instrument for the arbitrary exercise of
power. In his practice of the law, I have not seen the man succumb
to improper influence or bias, and he has certainly never been
incompetent or inefficient. On the contrary he has shown a high
level of competence, integrity and capacity for impartiality.
Sure, he was appointed by GMA and he served in
her Cabinet, but so what? It happens that in our system, the
executive is the ultimate source of power, whether it concerns the
appointment of judges, or the administration of mechanisms for
discipline or removal of judges.
But whether Brion was specifically selected by
GMA on the basis of how he will likely decide on the Neri case,
rather on the basis of expertise and merit, is another matter.
Knowing Brion, he will most likely disappoint
the authorities who appointed him with this in mind. Throughout his
career as magistrate, he has consistently seen to it that the laws
of the land are administered fairly, rationally and impartially.
Give the guy a chance at the SC. I am confident
he will prove me right.
ernestboyherrera@yahoo.com
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