THE SERENO IMPEACHMENT IN PERSPECTIVE

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

SUPREME Court Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno won’t bow down to pressures to resign her post. She has made it clear. In fact, she has vowed to fight the impeachment complaint to its rightful conclusion. She feels it would run counter to her ideals and conviction, if she would just resign her post

The Chief Justice believes she has not committed any impeachable offense. That is why her battery of mostly young lawyers working pro bono is in the thick of preparations on what they have envisioned to be long drawn processes to slug it out in the Senate, the final destination of the impeachment complaint.

She has no illusions about the outcome of the impeachment complaint at the House of Representatives. The House justice committee chaired by Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali functions more like an impeachment committee. It is a virtual kangaroo court, where rules are changed to railroad the process of establishing probable cause of the impeachment complaint filed by an obscure lawyer.

For her, the Umali impeachment committee would not exculpate her from the charges, no matter how flimsy. For her, she has crossed the Rubicon, or the point of no return. She would take her chances at the Senate, which would convene as an impeachment court if ever the Umali impeachment committee passes the impeachment complaint to the House as a plenary body and the House approves its elevation to the Senate in a plenary session.

Dilemma

Actually, the House leadership is caught between the dog and the fire hydrant. If it works fast to the point of railroading the entire impeachment processes, the proposed constitutional amendments the House has been in the painful process of completing would suffer an unmitigated delay.

Given its fierce independence and the senators’ dislike of the thuggish leadership of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, the Senate, as an impeachment court, is likely to take its own sweet time when it comes to the deliberations of the impeachment complaint.

The entire process may take three months, or six months just like what happened to Renato Corona, who was removed after five months of daily public hearings. Or it could last longer.

Besides, even the Umali impeachment committee could not determine exactly the impeachable offense of the Chief Justice. It did not have any exact idea of the articles of impeachment, which it would bring to the House as a plenary body and ultimately to the Senate as an impeachment court.

Despite the prolonged public hearings of the Umali impeachment committee to establish the probable cause, it is still at a loss on how it would compose the articles of impeachment. There are views that the articles of impeachment would be largely on a legal fiction, which could be a ground for immediate dismissal by the Senate as an impeachment court.

The biggest issue is what appears to be the unwillingness of the House members, who are lawyers, to stand as prosecutors in the Senate impeachment. Although they have been quick to pillory the Chief Justice in the Umali impeachment committee, they are not quick to go to the Senate as an impeachment court. 

Legal theory

Section 2 of Article VII of the 1987 Constitution says: “The President, the Vice-President, the Members of the Supreme Court, the Members of the Constitutional Commissions, and the Ombudsman may be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, culpable violation of the Constitution, treason, bribery, graft and corruption, other high crimes, or betrayal of public trust. All other public officers and employees may be removed from office as provided by law, but not by impeachment.”

The witnesses, who appeared at the Umali impeachment committee, merely articulated their personal gripes, and claimed managerial and administrative lapses and issues, but declined to state or alleged categorically any impeachable offense by the Chief Justice. The witnesses were asked several times about the impeachable offense, but they gave hazy answers.

Although Umali said the committee would still conduct three or four more public hearings before the House as a plenary body decides on the impeachment complaint on March 7, the perception is that the committee has not accomplished much to establish the probable cause.

At the moment, certain members of the Umali impeachment committee are tinkering with the legal theory that those alleged managerial and administrative lapses on the Chief Justice’s part constitute negligence. Ergo, they could be interpreted as betrayal of public trust, one of the six grounds for impeachment under the Constitution.

Whether it could stand before the Senate as an impeachment court remains to be seen. But legal luminaries, particularly experts on constitutional law, find it revolting – or downright ridiculous - to view negligence as betrayal of public trust.

Legal luminaries have expressed the view that while the 1987 Constitution has made it extremely difficult for the powers-that-be to declare martial law and use it to perpetuate themselves in power, it is quite relatively easy to engage in the impeachment of impeachable public officials.

It only takes the endorsement of a single lawmaker to bring out the impeachment complaint on the table. Moreover, it takes only the vote of 100 lawmakers to bring the impeachment complaint to the Senate for trial.

Procedural issues

Just in case the impeachment complaint reaches the Senate, the Chief Justice’s camp is likely to raise questions against the inherently flawed public hearings of the Umali impeachment committee.

The public hearings have been defective from a procedural standpoint, as the Umali impeachment committee has yet to give a chance for the Chief Justice’s lawyers to cross examine the witnesses, who appeared in the public hearings.

Although the committee rules initially allowed lawyers of officials facing impeachment complaints to cross examine witnesses who appear during public hearings to establish probable cause, Umali and his ilk have changed it overnight by citing that only the Chief Justice could cross examine, but not her lawyers.

The Senate has two choices to make on this overnight change of rules. Either it sends back the impeachment complaint to the House so that the Umali impeachment committee could rectify its procedural errors or it just dismisses it outright. Either way, it would put the House Of Representatives in the bad light.

Chief Justice’s response

For sure, the Chief Justice would have her day in court. But it is safe to assume that she would not give her left cheek, when those lawmakers have been slapping her on the right cheek. She would say her piece even to the extent of exposing how these lawmakers have been pressuring her to accede to their demands.

She holds plenty of cards against them, particularly those pressures for her to appoint their proteges to key positions in the judiciary, or transfer them to lucrative posts. She intends to expose their machinations so that the whole world would know the reasons behind their obsession to remove her from office.

Moreover, she would answer those critics and enemies, who chose to go to the Umali impeachment committee to wash their dirty linen. For her, the Senate would be the right forum to speak her mind and voice her judgment on the many things that have been brought against her in the open.

The Chief Justice has other weapons. But she would unleash at the right forum, which is the Senate as an impeachment court.

Fight it alone

The Chief Justice intends to bring the fight to the Senate alone. She does not intend to muster support from the judiciary, which she heads. Unlike Renato Corona, who used the judiciary to counter the impeachment suit against him, the Chief Justice wants the entire judiciary and its personnel to concentrate on its job and focus on the judicial reforms her team has initiated and launched.

She wants nothing of those protest mass actions, or walkouts by court personnel, including judges of the lower courts. Or protest rallies, where court people wore black shirts emblazoned with slogans and black armbands. Or those daily protest Masses in the vicinity of the Supreme Court in Padre Faura. Nothing of the sort of what Midas Marquez, a loyal acolyte of Corona, did six years ago.

Incidentally, Marquez is now one of the Court officials, along with Associate Justice Teresita de Castro, who has been appearing in the Umali impeachment committee ostensibly to spill beans against the Chief Justice. Yet, Marquez, in his somnambulating testimonies, could not say with certainty the impeachable offense the Chief Justice has allegedly committed. He is the proverbial trouble maker in the High Court.

The Chief Justice prefers the Court people to stay away from the controversy because a mere expression of support for her could be fatal for their careers. The appointing power is essentially mad with the power in its hand. The people wielding that power would not hesitate to punish the people, who would support her.

They face career dislocations or deadend if ever they come out in the open and support her. They face suspension, banishment, or demotion through various means including their transfer to parts unknown. She does not want them to face the burden. 

She believes that they could best help her by not involving themselves in the impeachment issue. Moreover, the Chief Justice Sereno believes she has the nobility of purpose and cause.