BACOLOD City – Three members of the city council – who are also lawyers – were appalled with the Supreme Court’s (SC) decision ousting Maria Lourdes Sereno as its chief justice.
The SC, through a special en banc sessionon Friday, granted the quo warranto petition that Solicitor General Jose Calida filed seeking Sereno’s ouster.
Sereno is the first Philippine chief justice removed from position not by impeachment.
“It’s a clear violation of our Constitution,” said Councilor Dindo Ramos.
He stressed that it is only through impeachment that a chief justice can be unseated.
According to Councilor Caesar Distrito, “All lawyers, law students and even ordinary educated persons know that impeachable officials can only be removed through an impeachment proceeding.”
Under the Constitution, impeachable officials are the president, vice president, SC justices, members of the constitutional commissions (Commission on Elections, Civil Service Commission and Commission on Audit), and the Ombudsman.
“This is therefore not the rule of law that prevails, but the rule of ‘Gods in Padre Faur [Street],” Distrito said, referring to the street in Metro Manila which was closed to traffic on Thursday night ahead of the anticipated rallies before the SC en banc session.
Councilor Renecito Novero, meanwhile, said he is “saddened” with the SC decision.
Like Distrito and Ramos, Novero maintained that a chief justice must only be removed through impeachment.
Novero claimed that there is “politics involved” in coming up with the ruling.
Under Rule 66 of the Rules of Court, the government or an individual can lodge a quo warranto petition against “a person who usurps, intrudes into, or unlawfully holds or exercises a public office, position or franchise.”
The government can also file it against “a public officer who does or suffers an act that, by the provision of law, constitutes a ground for the forfeiture of his office.”
It added that the solicitor general or public prosecutor can file a quo warranto petition upon the order of the president.
Those who voted in favor of Calida’s quo warranto petition were associate justices Teresita Leonardo-de Castro, Diosdado Peralta, Andres Reyes Jr., Lucas Bersamin, Samuel Martires, Alexander Gesmundo, Noel Tijam, and Francis Jardeleza.
Those who voted against it were associate justices Antonio Carpio, MarvicLeonen, Presbitero Velasco Jr., Mariano del Castillo, Estela Perez-Bernabe, and Benjamin Alfredo Caguioa./PN
