Diosdado Peralta chosen as new top magistrate

The Supreme Court welcomes its new Chief Justice, The Hon. Diosdado M. Peralta. He is the 26th Chief Justice of the Philippines. He will retire on March 27, 2022. pic.twitter.com/lURCFsATAI

— Philippine Supreme Court Public Information Office (@SCPh_PIO) October 23, 2019

President Rodrigo Duterte has chosen Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta as the country’s next top magistrate.

The SC Public Information Office (PIO) posted a copy of Peralta’s appointment paper on its Twitter account, which was signed by the President on Wednesday, October 23.

“The Supreme Court welcomes its new Chief Justice, The Hon. Diosdado M. Peralta. He is the 26th Chief Justice of the Philippines.” it said.

Replacing former Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin Peralta will lead the High Court until his retirement on March 27, 2022. He bested Associate Justices Estela Perlas Bernabe and Andres Reyes, Jr. for the top SC post.

Born in Laoag City, Ilocos Norte, Peralta is an alumnus of the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Civil Law where he graduated in 1979, according to his profile in the SC’s website.

In October 1974, he obtained his undergraduate degree in Economics from the Colegio de San Juan de Letran.

He then started his career in government services as Third Assistant City Fiscal of Laoag City in 1987. In 1988, he was assigned to the prosecutor’s office in Manila City, then became the Assistant Chief of the Investigation Division of the Office of the City Prosecutor in 1994.

In September of that year, too, he was appointed as Presiding Judge of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 95, then eventually promoted to the Sandiganbayan in 2002 and became its presiding justice in 2008.

In January 2009, he was named the 162nd associate justice of the SC, making him the third presiding justice of the anti-graft court to be appointed to the High Court.

It can be recalled that Peralta was the one who penned the SC ruling which allowed the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s remains at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB).

Facing the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), which screens individuals aiming to be part of the judiciary, Peralta stood firm on his decision and said that the Filipinos should move on.

“I hope that issue has really been buried Your Honor, because if we do not bury that issue then we cannot move on,” he said.

“That’s why I said, I put that as part of my ponencia, as a reminder to those who will read my decision that there is a need to move on. We cannot live on the past,” he added.

Aside from this, Peralta was also one of the magistrates that voted in favor of the ouster of former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.

On October 2, an emotional Peralta explained to the JBC panel why he thinks he deserved to be at the SC’s helm.

“If I remember what I have experienced when I started working, Your Honor, mahirap eh (it’s hard). I think I deserve to be chief justice because I worked very hard all these years,” he said.

The magistrate recalled how others would tell him that he does not deserve to be the chief justice as he lacks achievements.

“I’m not the topnotcher, I’m not an honor student because that’s what they say, hindi naman daw ako (I’m not a) topnotcher… But I think I was able to compensate with the work that I’ve done  as a public prosecutor, as a judge, as an associate justice of the Sandiganbayan, as a presiding justice, associate justice of the Supreme Court, as a lecturer, and the chairman of several committees and member of several committees,” he stressed.

“I hope you have to take those into consideration that there is hope for an individual like me,” he continued.