The Duterte administration cannot hinder the preliminary examination by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on President Rodrigo Duterte’s alleged crime against humanity, consequent to his deadly war against drugs, by denying ICC access to concerned officials and personnel as well as relevant records without the discretionary “prior clearance” from superior authorities.
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.
The removal of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno cannot be short-circuited by an improper quo warranto action before the Supreme Court.
A petition for quo warranto to oust the chief magistrate cannot supplant the categorical provision of the Constitution that a chief justice, like the rest of the impeachable officials, can only be removed on impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate for “culpable violation of the Constitution, treason, bribery, graft and corruption, other high crimes, or betrayal of public trust”.
It is a joke for Solicitor General Jose Calida to claim that it was only recently during the impeachment proceedings that the government learned that Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno failed to submit all of her prior years’ SALNs when she was a professor in the UP College of Law.
Calida asserts that the one-year prescriptive period must be reckoned from this “belated” discovery.
The Magnificent 7 opposition group reiterates its call for at least seven Supreme Court justices to inhibit from the en banc adjudication of the quo warranto petition against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.
Six of the seven justices testified against Sereno in the impeachment proceedings before the House Committee on Justice, and one justice, together with the six others, figured prominently in the ouster move against Sereno which ended in forcing her to go on an indefinite leave.
