Sereno on impeach trial: Don’t delay

“What happens next is critically important for our democracy” —EV ESPIRITU

BAGUIO CITY—Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno on Friday appealed to the country’s political leaders to give her her day in the impeachment court and not shortcut the constitutional process by calling on her to resign—a demand she had flatly rejected.

Speaking at a forum attended by students, teachers, judges and court workers at the University of Baguio a day after taking an indefinite leave from the court, Sereno said she would continue her fight for the independence of the judiciary that had become “unduly crowded by other interests.”

“Allow me to make a call for everyone to respect the impeachment process by allowing it to take the only allowable course under the Constitution,” she said.

“The only constitutional manner of handling the impeachment proceedings in the House is for it to vote on the question of probable cause in a timely manner, not drag it further nor couple it with calls for extraconstitutional help to facilitate the ouster of the Chief Justice—such as calling on the Supreme Court to do the job of the Senate and oust me, whether by an internal action or by an action of the Solicitor General, and by delaying what is an already agonizingly long proceedings,” Sereno said.

The House committee on justice said it had finished its proceedings and the House would vote on whether there was probable cause to impeach Sereno, the country’s first female Chief Justice.

“What happens next is critically important for our democracy,” Sereno said.

If the House finds probable cause it “must immediately elevate it to the Senate, and not delay,” she said.

“Pakibilisan na po. Simulan na natin (Please speed it up. Let us start it now),” she said.

In Manila, lawyer Oliver Lozano petitioned the Supreme Court on Friday to rescind Sereno’s 2012 appointment as Chief Justice.

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said earlier he might challenge the legality of Sereno’s designation in the high court.

“We respectfully pray that the honorable court en banc motu proprio declare void the appointment of … Sereno accordingly in the paramount interest of public welfare,” said the two-page petition of Lozano, a loyalist supporter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

He said he sought the tribunal’s judicial intervention to “end forthwith the divisive, disastrous and internationally ignominious controversy” surrounding the chief magistrate’s impeachment.

Sereno was forced to go on leave following the “consensus” of 13 members of the Supreme Court.

Lagman: Mutiny tainting SC

House opposition leader and Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman slammed the other magistrates for staging a “mutiny in the high court.”

He said their action “diminishes the respect owing to them and tarnishes their dignity even as they placed the high court in an inordinately bad light.”

“Instead of waiting for the chief magistrate to be impeached by the House of Representatives and tried by the Senate, pursuant to the Constitution for alleged ‘impeachable offenses,’ the concerned justices compelled Sereno to take an indefinite leave after a failed attempt to unseat or remove her,” Lagman said in a statement.

“After washing dirty robes in public, the subject justices laid bare the embarrassing hostilities in the Supreme Court,” Lagman said.

In her speech, Sereno took a swipe at the proponents of her impeachment, saying they “have bared their uncertainties [and] they have been contradicting themselves by more stridently calling for my resignation.”

“I ask only one thing from the political leaders,” she said, “give me my day in the Senate impeachment court or admit that there is no probable cause.”

To those who have been asking her to resign, she said: “No, I will not.”

“I do not owe anyone the duty to resign; I owe the people the duty to tell my story,” she said.

She said she was hopeful that after the impeachment trial, the “renewal for the Supreme Court can still be forged” and that the high tribunal would be “united by the common desire to serve our people, and protect their constitutional rights, especially in these troubled times.”

“I remain steadfast in fighting for judicial independence. I have faith that in the end, what some unpatriotic men and women had intended for evil, God will turn into good,” she said.

‘Unprecedented firestorm’

Sereno has been caught in the “strange and unprecedented firestorm of events this week in our increasingly diminishing democratic system,” said Pablito Sanidad, University of Baguio law school dean and former president of the Free Legal Assistance Group, which cosponsored the forum.

But the Chief Justice “is in fighting form,” he said in his opening speech.

Sereno said she wanted the public to be enlightened about what she was fighting for if the Senate convened into an impeachment court and heard her testimony.

“I want the public to understand why we need impeachment proceedings as well as the safeguards installed to prevent its abuse,” she said.

“I want the public to see that the trial will be fair and square, that no one will be allowed to strike with one hand tied behind her back,” she said. —WITH REPORTS FROM MARLON RAMOS AND DJ YAP