‘I CAN’T BREATHE’ Batangas Rep. Vilma Santos-Recto finds herself in the middle of feuding magistrates, Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-de Castro (left) and Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, during a convention at Manila Hotel on Thursday. —GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
She could barely breathe.
Batangas Rep. Vilma Santos-Recto learned what it was like to be caught in a crossfire as she sat between embattled Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-de Castro, one of the top magistrate’s fiercest critics.
The actress-turned-politician was moments from delivering her speech as one of the guest speakers during the convention of the Philippine Women Judges Association on Thursday at Manila Hotel when the tension between the two magistrates snapped.
Sereno had just finished her speech where she lashed out at her detractors and criticized the moves to oust her when De Castro got up, took the microphone and rebuked the Chief Justice for raising a matter that she said was sub judice, or still pending before the courts whose merits should not be discussed in public.
“The tension was palpable. The entire hall felt it,” Recto recalled in a phone interview with the Inquirer.
“That is why the first thing that came out of my mouth was ‘I can’t breathe,’” she said.
Time for some levity
Recto said she was supposed to speak after Sereno, but De Castro, who had testified in the House impeachment hearings against the Chief Justice, abruptly took the podium to reprove the Chief Justice.
When the former Batangas governor finally spoke, she said she tried to inject some levity into the atmosphere.
“I said, ‘Let’s just stay fabulous,’ to make the environment much lighter,” Recto recalled. “I think the audience appreciated it because they applauded.”
Toward the end of the event, Recto hugged Sereno and told her, “You’re facing many trials. I will pray for you.”
But Recto said she did not mean she was taking any side.
Neither did her words mean she would vote in favor of the Chief Justice after the House of Representatives concluded the plenary debates on the impeachment complaint against Sereno, she said.
The House justice committee on Thursday found probable cause to impeach Sereno.
“Impeachment is no joke. It is my obligation to thoroughly study the committee report, whether this is just personal or administrative or whatever,” Recto said.
The Batangas congresswoman, like her husband Sen. Ralph Recto, belongs to the Liberal Party, though she is allied with the administration-backed supermajority in Congress.