Unless the Supreme Court beats lawmakers to it and rules favorably for Solicitor General Jose C. Calida’s quo warranto petition seeking Chief Justice Maria Lourdes A. Sereno’s quick ouster, the two chambers of Congress—as mandated by the Constitution—will proceed with the impeachment process: the House of Representatives in plenary expectedly getting a vote from the administration’s supermajority to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate, and the upper chamber convening as an impeachment court.
If these will happen before lawmakers go on recess by mid-March, the nation will likely see a reprise of January to May 2012 events, when the Senate—as an impeachment court—tried then-Chief Justice Renato Corona and convicted him, by a 20-3 vote, for failing to file a truthful Statement of Assets Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN).
In the Sereno case, the SALN law has again become one of the centers of attention, because her accuser, lawyer Larry Gadon, told the House justice committee that she failed to file SALNs for certain years when she was yet working as a professor at the University of the Philippines. The justice committee overwhelmingly voted on March 8 to confirm there was probable cause in the complaint, thus, endorsing the same to plenary, which will tackle the committee report once
it is submitted.
Beyond the SALN and other issues raised against Sereno, however, there are lessons to be drawn from these two chief justices and their impeachment cases. And the current batch of senators are only too aware of these, as they prepare for their roles as impeachment judges, should the articles of impeachment get transmitted to their chamber.
“Impeachment being political, legal, subjective and partisan,” this 2018 episode should, in the view of Sen. Gregorio B. Honasan II, “avoid trial by publicity,” or a “premature verdict based on incomplete inaccurate information.”
In an interview with the BusinessMirror, Honasan added that the protagonists in the impeachment proceedings should “avoid forum shopping, the violation of the sub judice rule by all parties, which might sway public opinion, or prejudice, muddle, distort, cloud issues in the hearts and minds of the primary audience—the Filipino People.”
Above all, the “accused public official, the impeachment court, the prosecutors and the defense must maintain high moral, legal and political ground before, during and after the trial, for the sake of the institutions involved, and public interest,”
Honasan added.
Sen. Juan Miguel F. Zubiri puts the burden of scrutiny on the SALN, as it was the main issue that rendered Corona “jobless—as former Sen. Rene Saguisag put it—and which could now be a potent weapon against his successor Sereno.
Zubiri clarified he was not part of the Corona trial, as he “resigned my post August 3, 2011, while the impeachment rolled off on December 12, 2011.”
Still, he followed the Corona case closely from the time the trial at the Senate opened in January 2012, till the time the 23 senators—led by then-Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile—voted on May 29, 2012, to convict Corona.
Zubiri thinks the lessons from the cases of the two chief justices are for all public officials to heed the SALN law, or Republic Act 6713, which Saguisag authored. “First, the SALN is a simple document that, in its simplicity, could knock you down. Any changes to your SALN should be recorded, and one should not wait for the last day of the year to be so recorded,” Zubiri pointed out.
Second, Zubiri asserts that all public officials must be “honest, honest, honest and attach all documents to support transactions covered by the SALN.” Definitely, he stressed, “a messenger whose earnings are only his government pay envelope will generally have a vastly different SALN filing from one of a Chief Justice with various investments and property transfers or bequeaths even just to his immediate family.”
Zubiri thinks all those involved in this impeachment case must “study for it,” especially non-lawyers, who, he said, “must brush up with the rules of the impeachment court.”
In the current Senate, the lawyers are: Francis G. Escudero, Richard J. Gordon, Leila M. de Lima, Juan Edgardo M. Angara, Franklin M. Drilon, Francis N. Pangilinan and Senate President Aquilino L. Pimentel III, who was a Bar topnotcher. De Lima is in detention on drug-related charges, but has signaled she will ask the court to allow her to attend the impeachment trial, when it gets underway.
Escudero explains the key lessons are not on the part of the Senate “but, rather, on the part of the respondent… specifically, that an impeachment trial is both a judicial/legal and political process and not solely a legal nor political process.”
“It is sui generis, or a class of its own, and cannot be simply likened to a judicial process,” Escudero told BusinessMirror in a separate interview.
Indeed, the 2012 Corona trial had been marked for the several occasions when the legal eagles from both sides clashed on issues in uncharted territory, such as, whether the bank-secrecy law trumped public interest in determining whether their chief magistrate was honest in declaring his wealth.
While Enrile, as presiding judge in the Corona impeachment trial, was deemed a brilliant lawyer, he faced off with a worthy adversary: Corona’s chief lawyer, the former Justice Secretary Serafin Cuevas.
Senate Majority Leader Vicente C. Sotto III, replying to the BusinessMirror’s question on the lessons drawn, said that, while two chief justices are involved in the 2012 and 2018 cases, there are “different strokes for different folks.” Thus, he said, senator-judges would do well to thoroughly review the rules of impeachment court.
“Prepare, prepare, prepare” is also the mantra of neophyte Sen. Emmanuel Joel J. Villanueva, even as the Senate has been reported to be making all the physical and logistical preparations for a trial, with Pimentel declaring “we are ready, willing and able” to conduct the Sereno trial should it be elevated to their chamber.
“Right now, we can only prepare and study the procedures, precedents—including that of the previous Corona impeachment—and make sure we will be ready to scrutinize the articles of impeachment, the facts and the arguments of both sides,” Villanueva said. “Rest assured that I will perform my constitutional duty according to the dictates of reason, the law and my conscience.”
Villanueva, however, begged off from further comment, noting that the “articles of impeachment is still with the HOR [House of Representatives] and we cannot assume that it will be transmitted to the Senate.” If that happens, he added, “I will be acting as a member of the jury, and we have to be impartial with everything the impeachment court will tackle.”
Though he is no longer a senator, Saguisag shared his view with the BusinessMirror. The law professor and known champion of due process expressed the wish that the Senate impeachment court—should it be eventually convened for Sereno—would not summon any Supreme Court justice, as what happened in the House justice committee hearings, where six incumbent associate justices and two previous ones testified.
“I long for the day,” Saguisag said, “when justices were read, not seen nor heard, [like] today, arguably reducing their Mount Olympus image to a current vestige of Smokey Mountain [which may be unkind and unfair, not altogether like the perception that the Court of Appeals is a Palengke, not fair to the many justices who prove true to their oaths and to the people, not to any appointing power],”
The former senator also voiced hope that “the Senate will discourage the CJ [Sereno] from handling her own case.”
Saguisag thinks his namesake, Corona, “committed suicide by taking the witness stand to defend himself, at war with the apothegm that a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client.”
Meanwhile, the prosecutors from the House have a key lesson or two to learn from the Corona case, Saguisag added. “The House Impeachment hotshots should not forget another basic lesson either, never ask a question the answer to which you don’t already know.” He recalls that “blunder” was “committed by the prosecutors in the case of Rene [Corona] in asking Ombudsman Chit [Conchita Morales] Carpio on Rene’s dollar accounts.”
Saguisag, likewise, expressed the view that as lawmakers, “the Senate should not compel the violation of the physician-patient privilege,” apparently alluding to the move of the House justice committee to compel appearance of the psychiatrists commissioned by the Judicial and Bar Council to conduct assessments on then chief justice aspirants, including Sereno.
That physician-patient privilege, according to Saguisag, was “mangled by the House in a bid to remove a public school and Ateneo alum, before she went to the finest law school in Diliman and graduating as valedictorian, before getting her master’s in Michigan. How many insane lawyers can match her academic credentials?”
In Saguisag’s view, the Senate trial should be held by all means, as one “could only be ‘quo-warrantized’ within a year after the cause of action arose.” He cited the Rules of Court, Rule 66, Section 11, for this, in weighing in against the quo warranto petition that Calida filed last week asking the SC en banc to declare Sereno unqualified for the post of chief justice when she was appointed to it. However, having been appointed in 2012, she could no longer be subject of a quo warranto petition in 2018, Saguisag stressed.
“Let the show begin,” Saguisag added. “The CJ is even now a winner who can only fall into the arms of our people if she loses the numbers game because the President is hell-bent on controlling the entire government.”
“Had she [Sereno] followed what the President wanted and did not assert judicial independence, she wouldn’t be where she is today, a potential martyr for the cause of such autonomy,” Saguisag noted.
Last week Calida created a stir, not just with his quo warranto filing that was seen as an infringement of the constitutional mandate of Congress in impeachment, but also for his remark that he wanted Sereno ousted by her own court as an “act of kindness.” He said he wanted to spare her the ignominy that befell her predecessor “at the hands of politicians who judged him unfairly.”
Did Calida really draw that lesson from the 2012 Corona trial? When asked by BusinessMirror, today’s senators refused to be drawn into reacting on whether the solicitor general was effectively also prejudging the ability of the current crop to give Sereno a fair trial.
In a word, their message was simply: let’s wait and see, or abangan, as the nation does, with bated breath.
2 comments
There might not be an impeachment trial in the Senate; however, she will have all the chances in the world to present her side of the story before the Supreme Court which is hearing the quo warranto case. So, Sereno’s cries for justice and fairness are untenable.
Ito si Saguisag no on bilib ako, pero noong nagka aksidente umiba ang takbo sa utak niya, medyo may sayad na..