MALACAÑANG on Thursday said the South China Sea issue was not a factor in the selection of the new Supreme court chief justice even as President Rodrigo R. Duterte had criticized Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio’s position in his remarks in Lanao del Norte last Wednesday. In his speech at the groundbreaking ceremony of the Panguil Bay Bridge in Tubod, Lanao del Norte last Wednesday evening, Mr. Duterte announced that he appointed Court of Appeals Associate Justice Rosmari D. Carandang as Supreme Court justice and Associate Justice Lucas P. Bersamin as the country’s 25th chief justice. “Carandang, she’s actually the most senior in the Court of Appeals. She’s a woman. She and Carpio were classmates. But Carpio was only salutatorian. He was not the valedictorian. It was Carandang. But Carandang was stuck in the Court of Appeals,” the President said. Mr. Duterte then questioned Mr. Carpio’s stand on the South China Sea issue. “Just because you’re a salutatorian, it does not mean a shi* to me. You keep on hankering that you’ll attack the — you do something. What do you want me to do? Arbitration, so I’ll order my military and the police to go there in Palawan and shoot it out? It will be a massacre. We will not win there. We won’t get anything from it,” he said. Mr. Carpio, who has written a book and lectures on the country’s rights to a portion of the South China Sea, was part of the legal team in the arbitration case that was won by the Philippines in an international tribunal. For his part, Presidential Salvador S. Panelo said in an interview with reporters on Thursday that Mr. Carpio’s position on the South China Sea issue had nothing to do with the selection, and reiterated that such decisions were “discretionary” for the President. — Arjay L. Balinbin

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