- Bongbong asks SC to raffle off case again
- Leni chides him for ’acting like a spoiled brat’
The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) on Monday called on the Supreme Court to compel Associate Justice Marivic Leonen to inhibit himself from any involvement in former Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo, citing the magistrate’s “evident bias and manifest partiality.”
In seeking for Leonen’s recusal as justice-in-charge, the OSG through Solicitor General Jose Calida accused Leonen of bias and deliberately delaying the resolution of the Marcos poll protest by sitting on it for almost one year.
“There are sufficient and reasonable bases for the impression, if not outright conclusion, that Honorable Justice Marvic M.V. F. Leonen, arising from the clear and convincing evidence…is biased or partial against the interest not only of the protestant Marcos but also that of the people who have waited for the resolution of the election protest,” the OSG’s omnibus motion said.
In his motion filed earlier in the day, Marcos asked the Court to raffle off his case again to another justice, who could resolve all pending incidents for a speedy resolution of his appeal to nullify the proclamation of Robredo, whom he accused of massive cheating in the vice presidential rice four years ago.
“A refusal to inhibit, given the political stakes involved, will destroy the reputation of an independent judiciary. Non-inhibition will likewise result to [sic] the sense that whoever loses the case was not accorded due process given the contrasting expectation,” Calida said.
"The people need to know who the actual winner is in the vice-presidential race. It is unfair for the sitting vice president to be accused of cheating, and equally unfair for the protestant to give him false hope in the guise of calculated yet very slow progress of the protest,” Calida added.
This was the first time that the chief state lawyer intervened in a pending vice presidential electoral protest.
Marcos filed his motion for inhibition with the SC on Monday morning, while Calida sent his messenger and filed his motion in the afternoon.
The OSG also accused Leonen of branding all the Marcoses as plunderers.
"As evident from the above, Justice Leonen gave the impression that the Marcoses are guilty of the crime of plunder. Yet a quick perusal of Republic v. Sandiganbayan from where he purportedly sourced his ad hominen arguments reveals that the Supreme Court in said case merely ordered the civil forfeiture of treasury notes and bank accounts of foreign foundations. And while the word 'kleptocracy' was, by way of allegation, used by petitioner Republic in said case, said word and the other similar words were never used by the Supreme Court," the OSG said.
Marcos said he had not discussed his motion with Calida.
Robredo’s camp, meanwhile, told Marcos to "stop acting like a spoiled brat" by seeking Leonen’s inhibition.
Robredo's lawyers Beng Sardillo and Emil Marañon accused Marcos of a "mind conditioning game again.”
"We are not surprised. This is another trademark move of Mr. Marcos. If he doesn't get what he wants, he moves to attack the integrity of an institution or a person to force them to give in to his desires," their statement read.
But Marcos said given the “clear and convincing evidence of bias, partiality and prejudice” on the part of Leonen, his continued presence as justice-in-charge would deprive him of his constitutional right to due process of the law.
He added that no fair and speedy resolution of his protest was possible while Leonen is in charge of his case.
“Justice Leonen has left us no choice but to file this motion. It is very clear that the justice has shown a pattern of prejudice, of bias, of partisanship and you can see that all the people who came to his defense are all on the other side of the political aisle,” Marcos said in an online press conference.
“All I want is for this case to be finished before it becomes moot and academic. At this instance, it becomes urgent,” Marcos said.
Marcos cited Leonen’s well-documented bias against him and his family as one of the main reasons why the justice sat on his election protest for almost a year.
Leonen took over the case from Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa as the justice-in-charge in October 2019. Both are appointees of former President Benigno Aquino and are known to be staunch allies of the Liberal Party.
“It is clear that we’ll never get justice if Leonen is around because of his hatred towards me and my family. This is evidenced by his past decisions where he unequivocally condemned me and my family. Its obvious he’s doing everything in his power to suppress the real story behind the 2016 vice-presidential elections, disenfranchising millions of Filipinos who wanted nothing but credible elections," Marcos said.
Marcos mentioned instances where Leonen showed disdain for the Marcos family, including his opposition to the burial of his father, former President Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Marcos noted that Leonen was appointed by then President Aquino to be the chief negotiator during peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). These led to the creation of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), which was eventually struck down by then Senator Marcos who, at that time, was chairman of the committee on local government.
Marcos's camp believes that Leonen was using the election protest to exact 'vengeance' because he had rejected the BJE.
Last week, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) submitted their respective Comments on the election protest in compliance with an order from the Supreme Court, sitting as the presidential electoral tribunal (PET). Both affirmed Marcos’ position that the PET had power to declare the annulment of votes in Basilan, Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao, the three areas identified in Marcos’s third cause of action.
“The fact that both the Comelec and the OSG agreed with my position is a clear sign that the protest should move forward. However, Justice Leonen's bias and deliberate procrastination continue to drag the case," Marcos said.
"The right thing to do is for Justice Leonen to recuse himself from participating in my election protest so that the case can finally move forward. We need to resolve the issue of legitimacy — one way or another,” he added.
Marcos said the fact that Leonen inquired about PET’s jurisdiction over his protest when hearings have been conducted and it has been pending for four and a half years was “clearly a delaying tactic.”
He said he has no intention of further delaying his protest.
Marcos said he believed Calida was only doing his job “as the counsel for the state, for the government” when the OSG asserted before the SC, sitting as a Presidential Electoral Tribunal, that it has sole jurisdiction to declare the annulment of as part of its mandate to decide all election contests for president and vice president.
As part of his election protest against Robredo, Marcos has sought the annulment of election results in Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, and Basilan due to alleged terrorism and voter harassment.
Recently, Calida and lawyer Lorenzon Gadon, a Marcos supporter, have asked the Supreme Court for copies of Leonen's Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth "for purposes of preparing a quo warranto petition.” However, the SC denied their request.
Marcos admitted that he has been "in touch" with Gadon.
"May we remind Mr. Marcos that it’s already 2020. This is no longer the period of his father’s reign of terror where they can do anything they want," Robredo's lawyers said.
“Stop acting like a spoiled brat who cries when he doesn’t get his candy,” the lawyers said.
A group of former martial law detainees said Marcos’s motion was “an act of a sore loser and a spoiled brat.”
“You cannot exclude an independent voice in the process because he dissented on the Supreme Court’s approval on the hero’s burial of Ferdinand Sr. and voted based on his conscience,” Samahan ng Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto said in a statement Monday.
“This petition of Bongbong Marcos shows the classic intolerance of dissent of the Marcoses. It is malicious, it is baseless, it is Marcosian,” they said.
They urged the Supreme Court to junk Marcos’s petition so that the truth would prevail.
“Vice President Leni Robredo won over Bongbong Marcos in the 2016 elections because the people see through the historical lies and schemes of the Marcoses to politically rehabilitate their bloody record of injustices they committed. These acts are desperate stunts of a sore loser and a spoiled brat,” the group also said.