A Commission on Elections (Comelec) official and a prominent female lawyer were among the 28 candidates vying for the lone vacant position in the Philippine Supreme Court.
However, since they are "outsiders," both Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento and lawyer Ma. Carolina "Katrina" Legarda have to attend a public interview to be conducted by the Judicial and Bar Council to fill up the vacancy before August 17.
The JBC, which screens nominees for judicial positions, will soon publish the names of the 28 nominees for the High Court, Court spokesman Jose Midas Marquez said.
Names will be published to elicit comments from the public before subjecting candidates to a public interview.
This marks the first time that President Benigno Aquino III will have the chance to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court until August 17.
The Constitution requires the president to fill vacancies in the Supreme Court within 90 days of the vacancy.
Sarmiento, a magna cum laude of San Beda College, secured his law degree from the University of the Philippines in 1978.
In 1986, he was one of the commissioners of the 1986 Constitutional Commission that drafted the Constitution approved in a plebiscite in 1987.
From 1991 to 1994, Sarmiento became a consultant of the Presidential Human Rights Committee.
In April 2006, he was appointed to the Comelec.
For her part, Legarda was lead counsel in a group of three women lawyers who successfully prosecuted Zamboanga del Norte Rep. Romeo Jalosjos in the statutory rape case filed by his 11-year-old victim.
She also handled the libel case filed by the late former President Corazon Aquino against the late publisher Max Soliven and columnist Luis Beltran, Governor Lito Osmeña's citizenship case, among others.
