Chief Justice Bersamin retires

Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin retired Friday at 70 years old.

Ending a 33-year career as a judge, the last decade of which he spent in the Supreme Court (SC), Bersamin bowed out of the Philippine judiciary after leading it as chief justice for 11 months.

President Rodrigo Duterte's second chief justice appointee, Bersamin succeeded retired chief justice Teresita Leonardo-De Castro, who for less than two months led a high court fresh from ousting ex-top magistrate Maria Lourdes Sereno last year.

Bersamin said he would like to be remembered as the "healing chief justice who brought stability and normalcy back to the judiciary and particularly to the Supreme Court."

"Yes, the judiciary needed healing and it became my responsibility as chief justice to initiate and ensure such healing," Bersamin said in his retirement ceremony last week.

When he was newly appointed as chief justice, Bersamin said he would initiate updates in the Rules of Court and in the Bar exams, endeavor to cleanse the ranks of the judiciary, and enhance law students' participation in extending legal assistance to the poor.

A University of the East law graduate, Bersamin was appointed as a Quezon City regional trial court judge in 1986, promoted to the Court of Appeals in 2003, and designated to the SC in 2009 by then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

As associate justice, he wrote the majority decision that acquitted Arroyo of plunder and the ruling that granted bail to former Senate President and plunder defendant Juan Ponce Enrile on humanitarian grounds.

He had also penned the ruling declaring some acts under the Disbursement Acceleration Program unconstitutional. He was also part of the unanimous vote that declared the Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel unconstitutional.

He had also written the decision siding with the Philippine Airlines' retrenchment of 1,400 cabin crew employees in 1998, and the ruling that upheld Arroyo's authority to appoint the next chief justice despite a ban on "midnight appointments" under the Constitution.

He voted in favor of the extensions of martial law in Mindanao, the burial of former president Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, Sereno's ouster, and the continued detention of Senator Leila de Lima.

He was also part of the recent majority vote ordering new actions in the election protest filed by Marcos' son and namesake against Vice President Leni Robredo.

The SC, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, decided to release to the parties the report on an initial vote recount involved in the protest and ordered them to comment and submit their position on Bongbong Marcos' bid for the annulment of votes in three Mindanao provinces.

Bersamin admitted he had wanted to delay the vote, saying he did not like speculations that he had fixed the result, but was prevailed upon by the majority.

Three associate justices have been shortlisted to succeed Bersamin: Justices Diosdado Peralta, Estela Perlas-Bernabe, and Andres Reyes, Jr.

Duterte has 90 days from Bersamin's retirement to appoint a new chief justice.

Bersamin said he would prefer a new chief justice with "more EQ (emotional quotient)," as IQ, or intelligence quotient, was a given among his colleagues.

"I cannot talk to the incoming chief justice, I can talk to the rest of the court to support whoever the incoming chief justice is and I think that will happen because the court is very collegial," he said last Wednesday. —KBK, GMA News