Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque Jr. urged Chief Justice Maria Lourdes A. Sereno on Monday to resign, telling the Chief Magistrate to quit her post rather than be removed from office.
At a news briefing on Monday, Roque Jr. said he and the President share the same opinion Sereno should quit the Supreme Court (SC) so as to save the Judiciary from “further damage.”
“I believe so,” Roque said, when asked if he believes Sereno should resign.
“As a senior lawyer, as a law professor, I do not think the Judiciary can survive another decision that would remove the incumbent Chief Justice. I think it is high time now for [the] Chief Justice to reexamine very carefully the effect of another removal to the institution itself,” Roque added.
Roque said it would damage the integrity and credibility of the SC if another head magistrate, in a span of no more than six years, is impeached, referring to the fate of the late Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, who was removed from office in 2012 for nondisclosure of assets.
“We cannot wait for that,” the Palace official said. “If we were to wait for that, it is finding the guilt that will undermine the independence of the Judiciary.”
Asked if Duterte shares the same opinion, Roque said: “Of course, the President wants her to be removed altogether by all means. Of course, like [resigned poll chief Andres D.] Bautista, she could spare the court from further damage by voluntarily [resigning].”
The Chief Justice is embattled by impeachment complaints filed against her by lawyer Lorenzo G. Gadon. Gadon has accused Sereno of corruption, culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust and other high crimes.
The House Committee on Justice on October 5 found sufficient grounds to impeach Sereno, with 25 members of the panel voting in favor of the charges and two against.
The committee will next determine the probable cause of the impeachment complaints. “In the determination of probable cause, that is when we will have to go through it more methodically and we will have to look at each and every allegation to determine its sufficiency for purpose of impeachment,” said Rep. Reynaldo V. Umali of the Second District of Oriental Mindoro, the chairman of the panel.
For lawyer and former lawmaker Neri J. Colmenares, the President’s call to Sereno to resign is nothing but a display of his “intolerance for dissent.”
“There are people who believe that they are always right and everybody’s wrong: that’s President Duterte,” Colmenares told the BusinessMirror.
Colmenares said there is nothing wrong with Duterte criticizing the Chief Justice. However, to pressure her to resign is a different thing. “Ang problema, [when] some people think he’s wrong, nagagalit siya, binibira niya using government platform [The problem is, when some people think he’s wrong, he attacks those people using government platform],” Colmenares added.
The former lawmaker also said there is nothing for the President to fear about political stability, as he apparently controls the majority of legislators in Congress and justices in the SC.
Colmenares urged Sereno to cling on to post as her resignation will eventually “give way to an appointee of Duterte.” However, he said it is still up to Sereno if she can bear the heat of facing charges in Congress and pressure to resign from Malacañang.
National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) President Edre U. Olalia said the Chief Executive should cease from bulldozing Sereno, and must be reminded they are coequals in terms of power. [We, in the NUPL,] view these impeachment proceedings, to begin with, as a threat to the institution [of] the Judiciary and it undermines the separation of powers and checks and balances, which are very important principles in a supposedly democratic society,” Olalia told the BusinessMirror.
With this, Olalia said the President’s call to the Chief Justice to resign is inappropriate. He added two branches of the government—the Executive and the Legislative—are “in unison with each other in trying to boot out” the head magistrate.
To be clear, Olalia said he is not in defense of Sereno, but called on Duterte and his allies to respect the independence of the judiciary.
‘Threat’
Sereno, for her part, called on the stakeholders in the judiciary to strengthen the institution amid the current “resurgence of political forces threatening and harassing the independence of the Judiciary.”
Sereno, who is facing impeachment proceedings before the House of Representatives, made the call during her speech before the eighth International Conference on the Training of the Judiciary (IOJT) in Taguig City.
“We note that in troubled times in the past, kings would demand that courts would pronounce their acts as legal, not because kings did not have the physical force to impose their will, but rather, that kings wanted their acts to have the force of moral legitimacy, a legitimacy that many times was perceived to come from courts of law,” Sereno said.
She underscored the need to strengthen the Judiciary to be able to discharge its mandate, despite the forces undermining its independence.
“The delicate balance required to properly evaluate conflicting positions and competing interests can only be sustained by a wise and mature Judiciary that is unafraid to face the challenges of increasingly changing landscapes,” she stressed.
The Chief Magistrate also pointed out the importance of rule of law in the fulfillment of the Judiciary’s mandate to protect the basic rights of the people.
“The Judiciary must never forget the value of each human being while never forgetting that the community has interests that must be protected by reasonable restraints on the activities of individuals,” she said.
With Joel R. San Juan