CHIEF Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno asserts that the quo warranto case filed against her before the Supreme Court is a sign of desperation because those who seek to oust her have a weak case if they try to impeach her.
From where we sit, however, it seems it is the chief justice herself who is desperate, raising her voice to whoever will listen about a grand conspiracy to remove her from office, and portraying herself as the lone defender of judicial independence.
In a speech this week, she also chided the solicitor general for filing the quo warranto petition against her.
“Surely you must explain this unconstitutional act,” she said, insisting that under the Constitution, she can be removed only by impeachment. “What you’re doing is so evil.”
But the petition asserts that Sereno was unqualified for the post from the start, when President Benigno Aquino III appointed her in 2012, and may be removed for that reason by the Supreme Court.
Her colleagues in the Supreme Court—the final arbiter of legal questions—clearly disagree with Sereno on the constitutionality of the quo warranto petition. Otherwise, they would have dismissed the petition outright for lack of jurisdiction. Instead, they have chosen to hear oral arguments this week—and to order her to testify under oath—a sign that the petition may not be as unconstitutional or as “evil” as Sereno would have us believe.
In the meantime, the impeachment process will move ahead, spurred on by the President, who has grown exasperated by Sereno’s continued accusations that he is behind the moves to oust her.
“I’m putting you [Sereno] on notice that I am now your enemy and you have to be out of the Supreme Court,” Duterte said before flying to China for an economic forum.
“I held my temper before because she’s a woman. This time I’m asking the congressmen and the Speaker: ‘Do it now. Cut out the drama, or else I will do it for you,’” he added.
With little or no support from any of the three branches of government, it is Sereno, not her critics, who is in desperate straits.
We have seen before what happens when the government goes to war against a sitting chief justice. The same fate that befell Chief Justice Renato Corona now faces Sereno, who said nothing about judicial independence years ago, when her benefactor went after the chief with hammer and tongs—and crushed him in the end.