MikeLigalig.com

By VERA Files | The Inbox – 10 hours ago





President Benigno Aquino made history by appointing Lourdes Sereno as the country's first female Chief Justice, but he also broke tradition by setting aside the seniority rule and naming to the highest judicial post one of the Court's youngest associate justices, who also happens to be his college schoolmate.

Sereno's appointment places control over the judicial and executive branches of government in the hands of two graduates of the Ateneo de Manila University,
both 52 years old, who obtained degrees in Economics within a year of each other.

Sereno however has always maintained she has no ties with the President. She is said to have left an impression on him when she briefed the Senate on different issues on at least two occasions while Aquino was still a Senator.

Sereno, who was Aquino's first appointee to the Supreme Court, obtained her Economics degree from the Ateneo in 1980. Aquino got his a year later, in 1981. Sereno went to the University of the Philippines for her law degree. (The name and photo of Sereno, who was known as Lourdes Punzalan Aranal in her college days, do not appear in the Ateneo yearbook Aegis in 1980, the year she graduated).

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