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57-page impeachment complaint is destitute of merit as it is a compendium of self-serving conclusions of fact and law

Press Statements
  • Office of the Minority Leader
  • Rep. Edcel C. Lagman
  • Tel No. 4155455
  • Mobile No. 0918-9120137
  • 13 December 2011

 

              The 57-page impeachment complaint is destitute of merit as it is a compendium of self-serving conclusions of fact and law, spiced with hearsay allegations and motherhood statements.

             The impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona cannot be buttressed by a perceived popular pulse because the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary is neither a commodity in the market of popularity.

             The impeachment complaint was prefaced with repeated invocations on the alleged “midnight appointment” of Chief Justice Corona, but the complainants completely forgot that the Supreme Court in De Castro vs. Judicial and Bar Council promulgated as early as 17 March 2010 or almost two months before the May 2010 elections, a unanimous decision that there is no such “midnight appointment” and in fact directed the Judicial and Bar Council to “submit to the incumbent President (PGMA) the shortlist of nominees for the position of Chief Justice on or before May 17, 2010”.

             Verily, the former President did not appoint Chief Justice Corona until she got the go signal from the Supreme Court.

             The impeachment against the Chief Justice cannot be based on the collegial decisions of the Supreme Court where the majority adjudicated with finality justiciable issues as the ultimate arbiter of legal disputes.

             Moreover, some of these decisions more particularly on alleged gerrymandering and creation of LGUs have been positively acted upon by the three main departments of the government namely: the Legislative Department when the Congress passed the challenged statutes; by the Executive Department when the enactment of the statute was completed with the approval of the President; and by the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of justiciable issues.

             While the complainants invoked that the “principle of immutability of final judgment is one of the primordial rules for having a credible and executive system of administration of justice” they are the ones derogating the principle of immutability when they challenged and anchored their impeachment complaint on final decisions of the Supreme Court.

             The railroading of the impeachment complaint which outpaced the bullet train made the verification of the complainants a farce because it took them only a couple of hours to complete the grand design.

            If 188 complainants were allotted a minimum of ten minutes each to read and comprehend the 57-page complaint, it would take them 31 hours to attest that they have individually read the complaint.