The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) asked the Supreme Court (SC) Monday to dismiss various motions seeking to reconsider its March 17 decision allowing President Arroyo to appoint the successor of Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno.

OSG is concurrently headed by Justice Secretary Alberto Agra, who is also an ex-officio member of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) that screens nominees to replace Puno when the latter retires on May 17.

In its comment to the motions for reconsideration filed by various groups, the OSG said that the SC was right when it ruled that appointments to the High Court were not covered by the constitutional ban on midnight appointments, which started last March 10 and will last on June 30.

It argued that “there can be no midnight appointments when we speak of the judiciary because of the indispensable and deliberate participation of the JBC.”

“No midnight appointments in judiciary since JBC publishes list, accepts complaints, conducts interviews and submits shortlist to the President,” the OSG said, adding that judicial appointments are not done in haste, in secrete and without public scrutiny.

The government’s chief legal counsel also pointed out that the JBC does not have the power to withhold its list from the President as to do so would be “tantamount to it arrogating unto itself a power which it does not have.”

It noted that the JBC’s principal function is to recommend appointees to the judiciary and its duty is to prepare a list of three nominees for every vacancy from which the President will choose his or her appointee. “This duty is unqualified. Consequently, it is a ministerial duty which respondent JBC is mandated to perform under the Constitution,” the OSG said.

It added: “To be sure, this ministerial duty to submit its list to the President is separate and distinct from its discretionary duty to determine who its nominees will be. As regards the latter, it can only be compelled to act, but not act one way or another.”