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[av_heading heading=’Old Supreme Court issue emerges in testimony vs Sereno ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY ADRIAN STEWART CO
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Thursday, November 30, 2017
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MANILA – A rare testimony at the House justice committee hearing on the impeachment complaint against Maria Lourdes Sereno opened an old issue at the Supreme Court that the chief justice had been grappling with for years.
Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-De Castro told the panel yesterday that Sereno revived the Regional Court Administration Office (RCAO) Region 7 in Cebu City in 2012 without the approval of the Supreme Court en banc.
According to De Castro, Sereno simply issued an administrative order (AO).
“I was taken aback because we were invited only to the launching of RCAO in Region 7 and we were not at all consulted and made to participate in the opening of this office,” De Castro said. “This promoted me to look deeply into this.”
“I was aghast when she issued the administrative order,” said De Castro. “If it is to be reopened, she can’t do it herself unless there’s delegation of power from en banc.”
De Castro said she and the other justices moved that the issue be taken up during an en banc deliberation.
They also questioned the appointment of the high court’s head of the program management office, Geraldine Faith Econg, as RCAO-7 head.
“In the course of the deliberation, the Chief Justice said, ‘OK, let’s make Geraldine Econg the head of study group’ so as not to embarrass her,” De Castro recalled Sereno as saying.
De Castro also said she wrote Sereno, questioning the move, as early as 2012 but the chief justice has not responded.
The camp of Sereno belied De Castro’s claim.
“It is false to say that the chief justice acted unilaterally and without the knowledge of the court en banc when she issued AO No. 175-2012,” read a statement from Sereno.
“Precisely, the creation of said office, its budget as well as the designation of its staff had already been approved and delineated in earlier resolutions of the court,” the statement read.
According to the chief justice, she simply carried out the resolutions after studying problems besetting far-flung courts.
The complainant, Atty. Lorenzo Gadon, accused Sereno of culpable violation of the Constitution for falsifying a 2012 resolution reviving the RCAO-7. He said the Supreme Court eventually issued a corrective resolution in January 2013.
Sereno called this “baseless.” “There is no en banc resolution nullifying, superseding or otherwise ‘scrapping’ the Supreme Court’s resolutions creating the RCAO-7.”
In answering Gadon’s accusation in September, Sereno said the high court had authorized the piloting of the RCAO-7 as early as 2006.
A 2008 Supreme Court resolution designated the chief justice to, “acting on his or her own,” designate the regional court administrator for the RCAO-7, she said.
But the regional office was piloted only in 2012 when Sereno appointed Econg as head of the Judiciary Decentralization Office in the 7th Judicial Region, which revived the RCAO-7, the chief justice said.
Then President Benigno Aquino III appointed Sereno the chief justice in August 2012.
According to Sereno, the subsequent resolution was not a corrective resolution or a recall of the first one but “was meant to address the concerns raised by some members of the court regarding the problems encountered during the pilot testing of the RCAO-7.”/PN
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