De Lima calls Chief Justice a ‘usurper to a public office’

MANILA — President Aquino’s most outspoken Cabinet secretary has come out yet again to shield him from Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona’s verbal assault.

Unleashing what could be her harshest tirades yet against the chief magistrate yesterday, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima called Corona a “walking constitutional violation” who should be impeached from office since he was “nothing more than a usurper to a public office.”

In a stinging statement, De Lima turned the table on the chief justice who accused the President on Wednesday of “slowly establishing” a dictatorship by trying to control the high tribunal with his impeachment.

“From the moment of his appointment, Chief Justice Corona was a walking constitutional violation,” the justice secretary said in a three-page statement.

She said like Arroyo, the chief justice was also a “beneficiary of a constitutional violation.”

“His appointment was the ‘Hello, Garci’ of the judicial department,” she added, referring to the alleged wiretapped conversation between then president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.

“Unlike the President, all that Corona can show for himself is his illegal and unconstitutional appointment as a usurper to the office of the chief justice by the other usurper, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.”

De Lima also warned that other justices appointed by Arroyo to the tribunal would meet Corona’s fate, should they protect the former president from facing accountability.

Calling them “Arroyo justices,” she said their supposed acts of aiding Arroyo would signal the “time the people, through their representatives in Congress, impeach them.”

“It is time the President and Congress reclaim the Court for the people,” De Lima said. “The Supreme Court and the judiciary do not belong to Corona… The Supreme Court belongs to the people.”

Sought for comment, Supreme Court administrator and spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez said the issue over Corona’s appointment has long been passed upon “by the High Court.”

“We all know that the court has decided with finality on that issue and those who disagree with the decision are free to disagree with the decision,” Marquez told reporters.

Asked if De Lima could be held liable for her statement against the chief justice, he said: “I don’t want to preempt what the court en banc will do. Let’s leave it to the (discretion of the) court.”

As to her warning that other justices may also face impeachment, Marquez said: “If they want to impeach more justices, these justices will just face all impeachment cases being filed left and right.”

De Lima dismissed Corona’s allegation that the move of Malacañang’s allies in the House in the Representatives to impeach him was intended to give the President a chance to designate “his own” chief justice “whom he could hold by the neck.”

“By being appointed chief justice by Arroyo despite the constitutional prohibition on midnight appointments, it was his own neck that was held by Arroyo,” De Lima said.

“A midnight appointee held by the neck of (Arroyo), Corona should be as he was rightly impeached for the simple reason that, like (Arroyo), he is nothing more than a usurper to a public office.”

She said Corona’s description of the President as a dictator “could very well apply to him.”

“There can be no more apt description of a tyrant than someone who holds himself above justice and accountability,” De Lima said.

She also lambasted the chief justice for acting as if the judiciary was his “personal retinue” by supposedly declaring a court holiday on Wednesday which, she said, meant that the “wheels of justice had to stop turning for a day.”  INQUIRER