GMA names 4 new justices to Court of Appeals

President Arroyo has named four new justices to the Court of Appeals.

Chosen from nominees submitted by the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), the four new justices are former Commission on Elections commissioner Regalado Maambong, Mario Guarina III, Danilo Pine, and Edgardo Francisco Sundiam.

The four were appointed last April 8 but the Malacañang Press Office made the announcement only yesterday.

Before being named to the Comelec in 1991, Maambong, 62, served as member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitution.

Maambong was a Bar topnotcher and a graduate of the Ateneo law school.

Sundiam, 54, also graduated from the Ateneo, where he teaches law.

Guarina, 60, who graduated from the University of the Philippines College of Law, was president of the Philippine Judges Association from 1999 to the present.

Pine, 66, also finished law at UP and was the recipient of the Supreme Court Centennial Awards for Judicial Excellence in June last year.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Arroyo swore in Renato Corona and Ma. Alicia Martinez as associate justices of the Supreme Court in ceremonies at Malacañang yesterday.

Presidential Spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao told reporters Mrs. Arroyo first appointed Martinez and that makes her senior to Corona when they sit in the High Tribunal.

Corona said the JBC submitted to Mrs. Arroyo last Friday its short list of nominees for the Supreme Court and that his appointment papers were signed last Tuesday.

On the other hand, Corona said he has recommended several people to Mrs. Arroyo to replace him as chief of staff in the Office of the President.

Corona refused to give their names.

Corona, 53, graduated from the Ateneo law school in 1974 and completed his masters in law at the Harvard law school in the United States in 1982.