THE House committee on justice on Monday subpoenaed the two psychiatrists who reportedly gave Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno failing marks in her psychiatric test, and asked them to bring her records from the Judicial and Bar Council.
The panel agreed to subpoena doctors Dulce Liza Sahagun-Reyes and Genuina C. Ranoy after an opposition member of the committee, ABS Party-list Rep. Eugene de Vera, sought to obtain Sereno’s psychiatric records from the JBC.
Reports earlier said the two psychiatrists hired by the JBC gave Sereno a rating of “4” on a scale of 1 to 5, with “5” being the lowest. The same report said this grade meant that while Sereno projected a “happy mood,” she also exhibited “depressive markers.”
The report said that after the test results were revealed, Sereno, who was chairman of the JBC, refused to renew the contracts of the two psychiatrists and terminated them in 2013.
The issue was raised in support of allegations of betrayal of public trust that lawyer Lorenzo Gadon raised in his impeachment complaint against Sereno.
In addition to the psychiatrists, the panel chairman, Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali said the panel would invite four other justices—namely incumbent SC Justices Mariano del Castillo and Andres Reyes, retired SC Justice Adolf Azcuna, Court of Appeals Justice Remedios Salazar-Fernando, and other court officials.
The committee will summon again Justice Teresita Leonardo de Castro, who had earlier testified that Sereno unilaterally issued a temporary restraining order in violation of the collegial nature of the high court.
During the impeachment proceedings Monday, Justice Samuel Martires testified on the delay in release of benefits for the spouses of retired justices and judges who had died.
In his impeachment complaint, Gadon alleged that the releases of the benefits were delayed for as long as two years when Sereno assumed office and created a technical working group to handle the release of the benefits.
“Some of the claimants told me that processing of their papers only resumed after I filed the impeachment complaint, “ Gadon told the panel.
But the high court eventually decided, through a decision penned by Martires, to release the benefits.
But Martires clarified that he appeared before the impeachment committee out of respect for its invitation and that he was not a witness of the complainant.
“I came upon the invitation of this committee; I am not a witness of attorney Gadon. I came here because of the invitation, which I cannot refuse,” Martires said.
For his part, Justice Diosdado Peralta said the delay in the release of the benefits could be blamed on Sereno’s creation of the technical working group.
“Why was there a need for a TWG?” Peralta said in Filipino.
In previous hearings, Court Administrator Midas Marquez said the move of Sereno and two other justices to create a committee and later, a technical working group, triggered delays in the release of benefits to justices and judges and their surviving spouses and relatives.
“Why don’t you just file administrative cases against any personnel of Supreme Court who slept on his or her job, who was negligent?” Martires said during the hearing.
“It’s time to clean up not only the executive and legislative branches, but also the judiciary. We keep on hearing about justices being corrupt, but nothing happens, they’re all scared,” he said in Filipino.
Court records showed a total of 29 petitions for retirement and survivorship benefits had been pending under the committee since 2014. These were only settled after the special committee submitted two memoranda to the SC en banc in 2017.
Aside from De Castro, incumbent SC Justices Noel Tijam and Francis Jardeleza have testified in the hearings against Sereno.
Umali said his panel hopes to finish its hearings by the first week of March at the latest. He said the panel would submit its recommendation for approval of the plenary before the House adjourns its session on March 23.
The Sereno camp, on the other hand, urged the House to immediately transmit the complaint to the Senate for trial.
Lawyer Josa Deinla, one of Sereno’s spokespersons, said the hearings were pointless, since both Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and Umali had already prejudged the case against the chief justice.
“Chairman Umali has publicly announced that the Chief Justice’s impeachment is already a done deal. He publicly stated that the impeachment process is just a matter of formality because the chief justice is expected to be ousted amid the strong belief of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez that the issues raised against her stand on strong and solid ground,” the lawyer said, in a statement.
“The House should now vote on the case and elevate this to the Senate where we expect to have a fair trial and where the rights of the chief justice will be respected in accordance with the Constitution,” Deinla added.