SERENO’S TRAVAILS AT SC

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

IT has been told countless times in legal circles how then President Benigno Aquino III took private law practitioner Ma. Lourdes Sereno, who was then 50 years old, to an interview in Malacanang sometime in early August, 2010.

PNoy, who hardly personally knew Sereno, raised a question that struck deep into the magistrate’s probing mind: “Are you prepared to be in the minority for the next 20 years?” When she answered in the affirmative, Sereno became the first PNoy’s appointee in the Supreme Court. She took her oath of office on August 13, 2010.

She holds the distinction of coming from private practice unlike most current and previous magistrates, who took decades to build careers in the judiciary and academe. Her appointment is the Supreme Court’s gain and the private sector’s loss.

Sereno did not have exact ideas what awaited her at the Supreme Court, but got the surprise of her life from the first day she stepped on its august hall. Magistrates appointed by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who ruled for nine years, have made her life miserable at the court of last resort.

Renato Corona, A GMA appointee, who was then removed as chief justice in 2012 for not including over P200 million in his SALN, assigned her as her office an unfixed room along the hall way. It made working conditions unbearable to any worker, who does plenty of mental works. It was noisy and uncomfortable.

Because she came straight from private sector and, ergo, did not share the same grind as those jurists who came from the judiciary and the academe, she was immediately given cold shoulders and treated miserably by her colleagues. This continues until now

Since her first day in office, Sereno has to endure with remarkable stoicism the snide remarks and braggadocio of Justice Teresita de Castro, who keeps on behaving as if she is the goddess and fountain of judicial wisdom. She had to endure the sarcasm of older colleagues, including nasty insults and even sexual innuendos and overtures.

Their overbearing behavior has not distracted the lady magistrate, whose priority has been to do her job mainly to interpret the law, dispense justice, and lessen the workload of an overworked Supreme Court. In her view, she does not have a problem; her colleagues are the ones who have problems.

Little by little, the lady magistrate saw the realities in the High Court.

The men and women in majestic robes, who give the final interpretation of the letters of the law and who are supposed to dispense justice, whose words become part of the laws of the land, are the most oppressive, hypocritical, and despicable.

She saw that the men and women, whom the people take as demigods who live in utter quiet and sedentary seclusion so that they could fathom and issue the final wisdom in the interpretation of the law, are a bunch of hypocrites, who have exaggerated estimate of themselves.

These magistrates have plenty of personal quirks and disdainful antics to project the trappings of power in their hands.

She saw how they do those things without moral compunction. For instance, some magistrates could not open their cars; they let somebody else do it for them. Others cavort with fixers in the court. Magistrates, who keep concubines, speak with the mistaken notion they are the ones empower to define morality.

She has come to dislike them, but she knows she has to live with them.

As earlier divined by PNoy, she has always been in the minority when it comes to decisions, particularly political issues. But she enjoys it.

Dissenting opinions have their power of persuasion that becomes manifest in the future. Her dissenting opinions may not convince her fellow magistrates, but they could persuade the public and the future generations.

Everything exacerbates when PNoy chose her as the chief justice in 2012 over the heads of senior colleagues, who feel they are God’s gift to judiciary.

Replacing a corrupt and incompetent jurist named Renato Corona, who claim to fame was to play ball with the powers-that-be that included the then first gentleman Miguel Arroyo, was not an easy task for the lady justice.

Hence, the Chief Justice has been the single project for the likes of Teresita de Castro, Diosdado Peralta, Arturo Brion (he’s retired), and Lucas Bersamin, who felt that anybody among them was better suited to become the chief justice. De Castro, the squared jaw magistrate, has even vowed she would work for her dismissal.

Behaving like the early Christians, who were fed to the angry lions, the Chief Justice stoically endured them, although not without a quiet fight. She has stayed away from them. She prefers not to be part of the “boys’ club,” of which her own colleagues operate like silent fixers.

She has ignored the machinations of faceless and nameless fixers, who try to influence the High Court’s decision. She has opted to live the quiet life of a jurist of probity, integrity, and independence.

Moreover, she has chosen to ignore the bitchiness of her colleagues. She knows her colleagues, who have been sources of leaked information that found their way in some smallish newspapers. They do it in utter violations of the traditions of silence in its deliberations.

She knows her own colleagues have been operating quietly to undermine not only her, but the entire Sereno Court.

Some magistrates would throw tantrums when they could not get what they want in and out the en banc sessions, but the Chief Justice would ignore the by going to the next topic in the agenda, which usually reaches at least 400 items during en banc sessions.

As the Chief Justice, she has stuck to rules. She has not accommodated their requests, particularly when it comes to public funds. She would not be part of their corrupt ways. Hence, she has gained nothing but their enmity and animosity.

But the Chief Justice believes that she is not the chief justice to give way to the whims and caprices of her colleagues in the Supreme Court. She would not give way to requests for additional budget if would cost P200,000 at the least.

The Chief Justice was quoted as saying in her April 9 public address to groups of human rights activists that the quo warranto proceedings is being resorted by her own enemies after they could not find any stolen funds in the High Court.

For sure, the travails of the Chief Justice would continue. She would be further subjected to public shaming. She would be replaced. But she is undeterred. Her source of strength is her deep faith in God and the Filipino people.

A prayerful Christian, Sereno believes she would be vindicated maybe not now but sometime in the future. She believes that God would always be kind to her and the Filipino people.

Nevertheless, she believes she has her God on her side.