MANILA, Philippines—Albay Representative Edcel Lagman on Saturday accused the House of Representatives’ prosecution team of wreaking havoc on the Supreme Court by including some of its justices as witnesses in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona in the Senate.
“The House of Representatives prosecution panel’s expanded fishing expedition to include justices of the Supreme Court as witnesses in the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona will inordinately wreck the high court,” said Lagman, former minority leader.
Lagman said calling the justices as witnesses will make them testify not only for or against the chief justice but also against each other.
He said it would also pierce and violate the time-honored confidentiality of the deliberations of the justices.
“Moreover, the collective decisions of the Supreme Court will be shredded to pieces as the fishing expedition navigates in to the high seas of the Supreme Court,” Lagman said.
According to him, the best evidence of the adjudication and voting of the justices were the decisions themselves and the dissenting opinions, if any, in which individual justices voted for or against the collective ruling of the court.
The long list of 100 witnesses and documentary evidence was submitted in compliance with Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s demand that both the prosecution and the defense submit their respective lineups.
In contrast, the defense team of Chief Justice Renato Corona announced that it would present only 15 witnesses.
Iloilo Representative Niel Tupas Jr., chief House prosecutor, clarified that only five, not 13 Supreme Court justices, will be presented as witnesses, along with the Supreme Court spokesperson and personnel, journalists, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales, and the doctors of former President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Tupas shrugged off Lagman’s charge, saying the House panel’s mandate was to search for the truth.
“We have no intention of wreaking havoc on the Supreme Court as our objective is to restore its strength and independence,” Tupas told the Inquirer. “By testifying before the Senate, the Supreme Court justices will help us attain these objectives.”
Bayan Muna Party-list Representative Neri Javier Colmenares, a House prosecutor, said there was no constitutional provision that grants the high court’s claim to confidentiality.
Colmenares said the people’s constitutional right to information cannot be trumped by “amorphous claims to confidentiality.”
He said Corona should not be allowed to follow the example of Arroyo, now a Pampanga representative under hospital arrest for election charges, who hid behind executive privilege and secrecy to escape accountability for corruption.
“Confidentiality cannot be used to hide from the charges of corruption and violation of our laws. The Supreme Court will further lose credibility if it hides behind confidentiality,” Colmenares said.
“We urge the justices to face the people in the impeachment trial and tell the truth,” he added.