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Wednesday, March 7, 2018
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MANILA – Amid the controversy Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno is embroiled in, the president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) fears that people might lose faith in the judicial system.
Atty. Abdiel Dan Elijah Fajardo described the filing of an impeachment complaint against Sereno and the move of the solicitor general seeking to remove her from the position as an “unfortunate development.”
Accused of culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, corruption, and other high crimes, Sereno was alleged to have failed to disclose her income fully.
On Monday Solicitor General Jose Calida also sought to nullify the appointment of Sereno – and thereby unseat her – via a quo warranto proceeding.
Calida claimed that he was offering Sereno an opportunity to avoid the fate of the late Chief Justice Renator Corona, who was impeached for similar accusations.
Calida’s move may be seen as simply an executive action against the head of the judiciary, Fajardo told a cable news program in an interview on Monday night.
“The sol gen (solicitor general) is part of the executive department so the impression of the people or the public is that this is an executive action against the chief justice, the head of the judiciary, which is a separate branch,” he said.
“We would have thought that the removal of the chief justice, the possible removal of the chief justice, would be confined to the legislative branch since, after all, it’s the only branch given by the Constitution with that power,” he said.
According to Fajardo, “the public perception should remain that the judiciary is apolitical.”
“It should be the most neutral branch of government because, after all, that is their final resort,” he said.
But “if the people see that the judiciary is embroiled in a very big controversy, you know, we might really lose faith in the justice system,” he added.
In the early days after the impeachment complaint was filed against Sereno, the IBP Board of Governors urged restraint on impeachment filings.
At the time similar complaints were being pushed against the heads of the Commission on Elections and the Office of the Ombudsman.
While it is one of the tools found in the Constitution to exact accountability, impeachment is a “bitter medicine” and a “political exercise” that should be “used sparingly and only in the gravest of instances,” the Board said in a statement.
The Board hoped that impeachment “as a process is not being brandished as a weapon of submission.”
“It is an assault upon the Constitution and the very ideal of limited government that is enshrined in it when impeachment is misused as the very tool to undermine judicial independence,” it said.
Supporters of Sereno believe allies of President Rodrigo Duterte organized the push for impeachment to remove a thorn in his side, The New York Times reported.
In 2016 Sereno advised judges named in a list of people suspected of protecting drug traffickers, whom Duterte publicly urged to turn themselves in, not to surrender to the authorities unless shown a court-issued warrant.
She also voted against two initiatives Duterte pushed – the declaration of martial law in Mindanao and giving the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. a hero’s burial decades after his death, reported The New York Times. (With ABS-CBN News/PN)
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