Former Senate President Jovito Salonga sounded off in the launch of a Supreme Court watchdog today that the first among the seven slots to be vacated in the SC next year would likely go to Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera, an ally of Pres. Arroyo.
 
“Solicitor Gen. Agnes Devanadera, a friend of the President who started as a mayor in a small town in Quezon, is allegedly the top choice for the SC,” he said.
 
Devanadera is not coy about her desire to be in the Supreme Court. We learned from sources privy to the meetings that Devanadera made “courtesy calls” to some Supreme Court justices last week. She also visited a member of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) Monday.
 
The JBC determines the short lists of nominees for vacancies in the judiciary and submits these to the President.
 
Devanadera dropped by the office of Dean Amado Dimayuga, a JBC member, around 3:00 pm Monday and left at 4:00 pm. We saw here at the JBC offices.
 
Devanadera arrived after the council finished its en banc meeting.
 
Apellate court Justice Amy Lazaro Javier, a University of Santo Tomas alumnus like Dimayuga, reportedly accompanied her to Dimayuga’s office. Javier also worked for the OSG in 1994 as Assistant Solicitor General.  
 
Devanadera failed to get Dimayuga’s vote the first time she vied for the SC post.
 
Dimayuga, told Abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak however, that Devanadera just submitted records about her pending case at the Ombudsman. Ilocos Sur Gov.  Luis “Chavit” Singson charged Devanadera with plunder in 2006 for failing to nullify the Poro Point contract between Bases Conversion Development Authority and Bulk Handlers Inc.  
 
Devanadera also made “courtesy calls” to at least two SC justices last week. As part of the selection process, SC justices cast their votes for nominees and relay their choices to the JBC, which usually heeds them.
 
Second try
 
Devanadera has made it to the list for the second time amid a pending case at the Office of the Ombudsman. She is one of 14 nominees vying for the slot to be left by Justice Ruben Reyes, who will retire on January 3, 2009. She was first nominated in 2007 to replace outgoing Justice Cancio Garcia.
 
The case purportedly cost her the seat, however, which eventually went to her predecessor at the OSG and now SC Justice Antonio Nachura.
 
Meanwhile, JBC member Sen. Francisco “Kiko” Pangilinan said that some nominees also made “courtesy calls” in his office, but refused to name who they are.
 
He added that doing “courtesy calls” is but one way of lobbying for a post at the SC. “Some would do a courtesy call, some would send their curriculum vitae to me and write me that they are endorsing this nominee,” he said.
 
But he explained that nominees knocking at his door for an SC position is “natural. What would be unnatural is if I entertain them,” he said.
 
Watchdogs
 
Supreme Court Appointments Watch (SCAW), a consortium of civil society
organizations, and Salonga’s own watchdog group, Bantay Katarungan, will also lobby for their own nominees for the next posts in the High Tribunal.
 
SCAW has formed its citizen search committee, headed by constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas, which would screen and vet nominees to the SC.
 
On the other hand, Atty. Emil Capulong of Bantay Katarungan told Abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak that they would also field their own candidates to succeeding seats at the SC.
 
Capulong said that, earlier, they had successfully lobbied for the appointment of now Ret. Justice Romeo Callejo.  
 
For its part, Bantay Korte Suprema (BKS), a coalition of legal, business, academic and civil-society groups in which Pangilinan is a convenor of, will not be active in the vetting strategy.
 
“We will not campaign for or against any nominee,” Capulong said. 
 
Instead, BKS will conduct information campaigns and research on the nominees. Pangilinan added that lobbying for certain nominees for the SC post should be done “in the BKS way,” in which information, whether negative or positive, about a contender, is made known to the JBC and to the public.