Alvarez responds to Sereno: Just show up in impeachment hearings

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and Supreme Court Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/LYN RILLON, GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno should just show up and refute the impeachment complaint against her before the House committee on justice on its hearing on Wednesday.

“Please tell her to just argue on the merits and appear before the committee on justice,” Alvarez said in a text message on Monday.

Alvarez was reacting to Sereno’s earlier interview, where she said that the former may have a hand in the ouster move against the chief magistrate.

Sereno, in a television interview on Monday morning, addressed speculations that Alvarez was behind the impeachment complaint as a way of getting back at her over the case of the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. Inc. (PIATCO), builder of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport-Terminal 3 (NAIA 3).

“I testified against the onerous terms of the contract that was signed between the government and PairCargo (later named Piatco), and Speaker Alvarez at the time was part of the committee that approved the terms of reference for the contract,” Sereno said.

Alvarez, she said, was implicated for awarding the Naia 3 build-operate-transfer contract to Piatco when he was senior assistant general manager of Manila International Airport Administration (Miaa).

Sereno then said she hoped that the move was not fueled by “vengeance or personal agenda.”

Lawyer Larry Gadon, the complainant in Sereno’s impeachment, also challenged her to personally attend the hearing on Wednesday and “refute point by point each of the 27 articles of impeachment which (Gadon) will prove with official documents released by the Supreme Court no less.”

“As Chief Justice, she should be brave enough to face my complaints. She should not hide behind her lawyers. I also urge her to refrain from threatening me with perjury because it is she who has been dishonest all these time, not me,” Gadon said. /je