Marcelo, Zuño, Abes rivals for ombudsman

The Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) recommended yesterday to Malacañang its list of three nominees for the position of Ombudsman, vacated two months ago with the retirement of Aniano Desierto.

The list, finalized after a series of public hearings and exhaustive deliberations on the qualifications of the 22 applicants for Ombudsman, includes Department of Justice Chief State Prosecutor Jovencito Zuño, Solicitor General Simeon Marcelo, and Social Security Commission Chairman Bernardino Abes.

Sen. Francis Pangilinan, chairman of the Senate committee on justice and human rights and a member of the seven-member JBC, said Zuño got seven votes, Marcelo, six, and Abes, five.

Abes, a former labor secretary and former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, was the oldest among the three at 72.

The Ombudsman Law does not give any age limit to those who could be appointed to the position. It was noted that a retired justice was even among the applicants for the post.

Pangilinan said that JBC could recommend only three because the law is specific on the number, unlike nominees for the Supreme Court which states that the JBC list of recommendees should be at least three.

He added that had the JBC been allowed to recommend more than four, then Chair Haydee Yorac of the Presidential Commission on Good Government would have made it. Yorac came in fourth with four votes.

Another prominent applicant who did not make it was acting Ombudsman Margarito Gervacio. Among the applicants he reportedly had the biggest number of dissenters — 14 in all — to his getting the Ombudsman post. — Efren Danao