Corona impeachment is SC’s 1st order of business in 2012

Supreme Court spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The first order of business for the Supreme Court next year will be the various suits filed before it questioning the validity of the impeachment case lodged against Chief Justice Renato Corona by the House of Representatives.

Supreme Court spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez said the four petitions filed by lawyers Oliver Lozano and Vladimir Alarique Cabigao, tax informer Danilo Lihaylihay and former Integrated Bar of the Philippines president Vicente Millora would be tackled by the court sitting en banc on January 17.

“All the justices have been given copies of the petitions and they are now studying them. Let’s see how the court will act when they resume sessions next month,” Marquez said.

He did not rule out the issuance of a temporary restraining order on the impeachment proceedings which are set to begin in the Senate on January 16.

Four petitions

Aside from issuing a TRO, Marquez said the high court could consolidate the four petitions or require the respondents to answer them.

Marquez declined to discuss the plan of the House prosecution team to compel Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco Jr. and Clerk of Court Enriquetta Vidal to testify before the senators who will sit as an impeachment court.

“Let’s wait for the summons. Let’s see how the court will answer,” he said.

In another development, Solicitor General Jose Anselmo Cadiz and four former national presidents of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) expressed support for Corona’s impeachment.

“We express our collective sense that the forthcoming impeachment trial of Chief Justice Corona would be healthy for our democracy. As we await the unfolding drama, let us not lose sight of some basic principles. Let us come out of this experience a stronger and better nation,” they said in a two-page manifesto.

Aside from Cadiz, who was IBP president from 2003 to 2006, other ex-presidents who signed the manifesto were Raoul Angangco (1995-1997), Jose Grapilon (1997-1999), Arthur Lim (1999-2001) and Teofilo Pilando (2001-2003).

No sacred cow

“No one in the public service is a sacred cow. Everyone in government, including high officials removable only by impeachment, is ultimately answerable to the sovereign people from whom all governmental authority emanates,” they said.

Cadiz et al. thus contradicted the stand taken by incumbent IBP president Roan Libarios and the organization’s current directors who, in a statement issued on December 14, expressed their “grave concern” over the “breakneck” impeachment of Corona, saying it subverted the constitutional allocation of powers and prerogatives to the Supreme Court.

The former IBP leaders said that while the primacy of the law and the separation of powers should be respected, “we must realize and accept that the rule of law and the doctrine of separation of powers do not mean, nor require, that the Chief Justice shall be immune from criticism, or impeachment.”