Junk SolGen quo warranto petition, Sereno tells SC

Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno (File photo by LYN RILLON / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Resorting to a quo warranto petition to take out an impeachable public official is akin to supplanting the 1987 Constitution and existing jurisprudence, Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno told her Supreme Court colleagues on Monday.

Sereno pleaded with her fellow magistrates to block the attempt of Solicitor General Jose Calida to unseat her through an administrative complaint for lack of merit and jurisdiction.

More than two weeks after she was forced to take an indefinite break by her peers, the Chief Justice answered Calida’s pleading, which challenged the legality of her appointment in 2012.

Only by impeachment

Sereno argued that Section 2, Article XI of the Constitution, unequivocally states that all members of the country’s highest judicial body may only be removed through an impeachment proceeding in Congress, like all other impeachable government officers.

“[T]he Chief Justice deserves her day in court before the Senate sitting as an impeachment tribunal,” Sereno said in a 77-page comment filed by her lawyer, Justine Mendoza.

“To rule otherwise, and to preempt the impeachment process by summarily ousting the Chief Justice via quo warranto, would be tantamount to overthrowing the Constitution itself,” she argued, adding that the Supreme Court had “consistently applied this provision as a limitation on its power to remove public officers.”

“[The court] cannot take cognizance of or give due course to [Calida’s petition] without running afoul of the plain dictates of the fundamental law and established judicial precedents,” she stressed.

The Chief Justice also turned the tables on one of her accusers, Supreme Court Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-De Castro, who testified against her in the impeachment hearings held by the House of Representatives’ justice committee.

According to Sereno, De Castro was among the 13 candidates who failed to present all their statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) when they applied for the top judicial post.

JBC authority

Sereno insisted that the JBC had the authority to relax the requirement on complete SALNs.

Besides De Castro, she said retired Associate Justices Roberto Abad and Arturo Brion, Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio (now the acting Chief Justice), former law deans Raul Pangalangan and Amado Valdez, and San Juan City Rep. Ronaldo Zamora also failed to submit all their SALNs to the JBC.

Nonetheless, Sereno maintained that she was able to fully disclose her real wealth while she was a law professor at the University of the Philippines before she was appointed to serve on the Supreme Court as associate justice in 2010 and as Chief Justice of the Philippines two years later by then President Benigno Aquino III.

She chided the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) for claiming that she failed to prove her integrity when she allegedly did not present all her SALNs to the JBC.

The Chief Justice said she was ready to controvert this allegation, which was not originally in the impeachment complaint filed by lawyer Lorenzo Gadon, in her impending trial in the Senate.

Moreover, she reiterated that only the JBC was mandated by the Constitution to vet the qualifications of those applying for positions in the judiciary and that “such question is a purely political one.”

“There is no authority for the judicial review of a purely political question as the OSG cannot substitute its judgment for the discretion of the JBC to include a name [on] the short list for the position of Chief Justice,” she said.

“[C]ertainly the OSG cannot overturn the then President’s decision to appoint [me] to that position,” she added.

Belated petition

Sereno also argued that Section 11, Rule 66 of the Rules of Court, which spell out the process in filing a quo warranto petition, clearly mandates that such pleading should be brought “within one year from the ‘cause of ouster.’”

The justices, she said, should outrightly junk Calida’s petition for being brought beyond the allowable period.

“There is no authority to commence a quo warranto proceeding more than four years after the expiration of the one-year statute of limitations,” she said.