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LAGMAN: HOUSE PROCRASTINATES AS QUO WARRANTO PENDS IN SC

Press Statements

The leadership of the House of Representatives has found a convenient excuse in the pending quo warranto petition before the Supreme Court seeking the ouster of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno to temporize forwarding to the Senate a weak Articles of Impeachment.

While as expected, the House Committee on Justice has found "probable cause" for impeachable offenses against Sereno, it has held in abeyance the submission of the Articles of Impeachment to the plenary for approval by at least one-third of the House membership.

It is calibrating its moves purposely to delay the House’s ratification of its foregone findings until the congressional "Lenten break" is over in May.

The proffered justification for this procrastination is the supposed need to wait for the High Court’s decision on the quo warranto action filed by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) for the alleged failure of Sereno to submit copies of her SALNs when she was a professor in the University of the Philippines.

Instead of protecting the impeachment power of the House from derogation, the House leadership has surrendered its constitutional power to the apparent usurpation by Solicitor General Jose Calida and the Supreme Court.

In fact, the House leadership instigated and endorsed the filing of the quo warranto petition by Calida, for which reason collusion cannot be discounted.

The quo warranto petition is grossly flawed because:

  1. It subverts the impeachment process solely vested in the Congress to indict and remove the chief magistrate. The House initiates the impeachment and the Senate sits as the impeachment court

  2. It is baseless because the submission of SALNs is not required by the Constitution for appointment as Chief Justice.

  3. No less than the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC), which prescribed the subject administrative rule, included Sereno in a shortlist of nominees for appointment. The Constitution provides that the principal duty of the JBC is to nominate appointments in the judiciary.

  4. The petition for quo warranto has long lapsed way back in 2015 pursuant to Section 11 of Rule 66 of the Rules of Court.

 

EDCEL C. LAGMAN