The JBC and FOI

Part 2 of our report on the Judicial and Bar Council focuses on the token transparency that marks the conduct of the JBC’s work and selection process. While the JBC allows citizens to attend its public interviews with the nominees, it has also kept under lock and key the asset disclosure records and other documents that the nominees have been required to submit. Even worse, the JBC discloses only the number of votes that the nominees receive after the screening, but not the details of which of the eight JBC members voted for which nominees.

“One way to remedy the imbalance is to let sunshine into the JBC to facilitate greater public scrutiny of its performance,” says lawyer Nepomuceno A. Malaluan of the Right to Know, Right Now! Coalition of 160 groups and individuals pushing the passage of the Freedom of Information bill. To achieve this, the JBC “must be committed to providing the largest measure of transparency and public access to its processes and to the documents under its custody, both pertaining to the applicants and to the JBC actions.