May 11, 2018 will go down in history as a day of
infamy in the country’s judiciary.
On this day,
the Supreme Court decided 8-6 to remove its own Chief Justice on a quo warranto
petition filed by the Solicitor General of the government of the Republic of
the Philippines.
We may recall that 9 out of the 14 sitting justices
of the Supreme Court joined last March the detractors of CJ Sereno in demanding
her resignation. Thus, in deciding on 11 May 2018, to remove the Chief
Magistrate from her post, the SC cannot be said to be impartial and objective,
a basic requirement in dispensing justice.
A judge should not
only be presumed independent, impartial and objective to decide on a case but
in actual behavior must be, so as not to derail due process. If from the start
the majority of the justices were already after her removal by resignation, and
the quo warranto petition before them was about her removal, too, then their
independence, impartiality and objectivity were tainted if not compromised. This
notwithstanding, they tried and decided to remove her. Due process was, thus, blatantly trampled upon by the very authority
that is supposed to protect and uphold it. It was a historic miscarriage of
justice.
The said justices
could have volunteered to inhibit themselves so that the integrity of the court
could not be held suspect. Considering
the power politic preceding the event, it should have been the best thing to
do.
It is everybody’s
knowledge that the President was mad at the Chief Magistrate when she insinuated
that the Palace was behind SG Calida’s
filing of the quo warranto petition against her. The furious President thereupon declared war on
the Chief Magistrate and vowed to take steps to remove her .
PRRD minced no words
in expressing his anger sayings: “Ikaw Sereno, sinabi ko na sa ‘yo hindi ako
nakialam (I’m telling you, Sereno, that I didn’t meddle). If you are insisting,
then count me in. Count me in and I will egg Calida to do his best. Ako na
mismo ang maglakad, [ka]kalaban sa’yo (I will be the one to do it, I’ll fight
you,)”
What was really the beef of the President with Chief Justice
Maria Lourdes Sereno?
We may be reminded that during the witch hunting that
accompanied the bloody campaign against
illegal drugs, the President pinpointed
some judges implicated in the commerce of illegal drugs.
CJ Sereno was quick to react and declared, in behalf of the
Supreme Court, that the Court is independent from the other branches of
government and ought to be left alone, following its procedures, in determining
the guilt or innocence of any accused judges. This belligerent stand in an
attempt to protect the independence of the judiciary infuriated the
ball-wrecking CEO of the land and everything went downhill thereafter.
The battles were waged and raged in all fronts. The impeachment
proceeding against the Chief Justice was initiated thereupon. Before it can be
completed, the Solicitor General filled
the quo warranto petition against her. Along the way, some group within and
outside the court worked to force her resignation.
Valid or not the grounds for her impeachment,
her accusers can proceed in pursuing it because it is the constitutional remedy
to remove her from office. The Impeachment Court decides her guilt or
innocence. The quo warranto proceeding, other hand, came in like a coup
initiated by the Executive Department. It’s foul, a blow below the belt, a no -
no in a constitutional democracy. It’s violative of the fundamental law of the
land.
Come to think also of it, the Solicitor General,
who is under the command of the President, is the principal law officer and
legal defender of the Republic of the Philippines. His primary duty is to represent
the government, its agencies and instrumentalities, its officials and agents in
any litigation, proceeding and investigation before the Supreme Court or the
Court of Appeals.
Why
then would the legal defender of the government launch the offensive of filing
a petition to remove the government’s very own Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court?
Whatever,
the President got what he wanted; his archenemy was booted out from the highest
justice tribunal of the land.
The
Supreme Court will never be the same again.
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