Acting Chief Justice Antonio Carpio has submitted a letter to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) on Tuesday, formally declining his automatic nomination for Chief Justice.

Carpio is the most senior justice of the Supreme Court. By tradition, the five most senior justices of the Supreme Court are automatically nominated to the post of chief magistrate.

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Aside from Carpio, the four most senior justices of the Supreme Court are Associate Justices Presbitero Velasco Jr., Teresita Leonardo De Castro, Diosdado Peralta and Lucas Bersamin.

Velasco and De Castro, however, are mandated to retire in August and October this year, respectively.

“I confirm that I am declining my nomination as Chief Justice,” Carpio said in his one-page letter to the JBC.

Carpio earlier explained that he would decline the nomination because he does not want to benefit from the ouster of former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.

Carpio is one of the justices who dissented from the May 11 ruling that ousted Sereno. He believed that a Supreme Court justice should be removed from office by impeachment as stated under the 1987 Constitution.

READ: Sereno kicked out by fellow SC justices in close 8-6 vote

He was nominated to replace Sereno by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP).

Retired Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. also wrote the JBC urging it not to consider Carpio’s decision to decline any nomination for chief justice.

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