Sereno retrieving SALNs for trial at Senate

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

Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno is now securing her supposed missing statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs), but she will present these only at the Senate during her trial.

“The Chief Justice continues to recover and retrieve her missing SALNs and will present them before the Senate sitting as the impeachment tribunal without prejudice to her legal defenses,” Sereno said in her comment on a quo warranto petition that the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) filed at the Supreme Court to oust her.

Incomplete SALNs

Sereno said she would not present the SALNs to the high court to rebut allegations she failed to submit her SALNs prior to her appointment as Chief Justice because she believed that the quo warranto petition should not be allowed to prosper at all.

The OSG had sought to unseat Sereno by filing the quo warranto petition, claiming that she failed to prove her integrity when she allegedly did not present all her SALNs to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), which screens candidates for justices of the Supreme Court.

The high court on Tuesday directed Solicitor General Jose Calida to explain why the quo warranto petition should not be tossed out instantly as Sereno had pleaded.

At their weekly full-court session, the justices decided to give Calida five days to file his reply to the 77-page comment which Sereno submitted to the high court on Monday.

Two court sources clarified that the action of the justices did not mean that they had given “due course” to the solicitor general’s petition, which challenged the validity of Sereno’s appointment as Chief Justice in 2012.

Constitutional mandate

Both sources, who declined to be identified for lack of authority to discuss the matter with the media, said the justices have yet to decide if they would hold oral arguments to resolve the legal issue.

In asking her colleagues to dismiss Calida’s petition, Sereno reiterated that the 1987 Constitution explicitly stated that members of the tribunal may be removed only though an impeachment proceeding in Congress.

This was the same reason that Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, one of the 13 justices who called on Sereno to take an indefinite leave of absence, cited in moving for the outright dismissal of the quo warranto petition.