Sereno urged to inhibit self from Arroyo couple’s case

Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. AP

MANILA, Philippines—Jose Miguel Arroyo, the husband of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, wants Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno to inhibit herself from the case pending before the Supreme Court involving the couple’s questioning of the watch-list orders issued against them by Justice Secretary Leila De Lima last year.

Arroyo, through his lawyers Ferdinand Topacio, filed on Thursday a motion for voluntary inhibition of Sereno at the Supreme Court.

The petition cited three grounds for asking Sereno to inhibit from the case and these were the Chief Justice’s “bias and partiality” towards the administration of President Benigno Aquino; her being “subservient” to the family of the President, including the Cojuangcos; and her prejudgment of the case based on her dissents on the instant case.

On Sereno’s alleged bias and partiality towards the Aquino administration, the petition cited as evidence the voting records of Sereno when she was still an Associate Justice and which saw her siding with the Aquino administration.

Among these cases included the Palace bid to create a Truth Commission to investigate Arroyo on her involvement in alleged corrupt activities during her administration where the majority in the high court voted it as an unconstitutional while Sereno was for it.

This was also the same thing she did in the petition of former Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez who asked the court to stop the House from hearing an impeachment case against her while the majority justices granted the latter’s petition.

Sereno also dissented to the granting of a temporary restraining order sought by the PS Bank on the dollar account of then Chief Justice Renato Corona when the majority of the justices voted for the issuance of the TRO.

Sereno replaced Corona, who was ousted after the Senate impeachment court in May found him guilty of fudging declarations in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth.

The petition also pointed out Sereno’s vote for providing the Senate with court documents related to the allegations against Corona, as well as for court employees to testify before the impeachment court when a majority resolution of the high tribunal stopped them from doing so.

It said Sereno had also expressed willingness to testify and “explain my dissent” on the impeachment trial against Corona but the high court stopped her from doing so.

“All of the above instances illustrate in big bright impasto strokes the propensity of CJ Sereno to vote blindly and consistently in favor of the stand of the present administration whenever it has shown its unequivocal interest–and at times a direct hand–in a desired result from the Supreme Court,” said the petition.

On Sereno being subservient to the Aquino-Cojuangco family, the petition noted the way Sereno voted in the case of Hacienda Luisita, owned by the President’s family. While majority of the high court voted to peg the land valuation of the Tarlac estate at the 1989 fair market value of P40,000 per hectare, Sereno voted to fix its value at the 2006 value of P2.5 million per hectare.

Saying that Sereno had prejudged the watch list cases against the Arroyo, the Arroyo camp reminded that Sereno had disagreed with the issuance of a TRO to stop the Department of Justice from enforcing its travel ban against the couple.

The petition took issue on Sereno’s move to summarize the voting made during the deliberations of this TRO in her November18, 2011 dissent as well as her statements there that showed “overweening bias.”

It said all this showed that Sereno was “consistently (toeing) the Aquino government’s line that petitioner Arroyo and his wife are already guilty of plundering the public treasury, that they should be forcibly kept within the country, and that in fact it was justifiable for the DOJ to disregard a lawfully-issued TRO from this court.”

“By these, she has shown early on where her loyalties lie, and how she will vote. Her neutrality has been neutered,” the petition said.