SPEAKER Pantaleon Alvarez said Tuesday the House of Representatives will not automatically transmit to the Senate the impeachment case filed against Supreme Court chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, which has gained enough endorsements in the House.
He made the statement even as the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption said Tuesday President Rodrigo Duterte had nothing to do with its filing of an impeachment complaint against Sereno.
Dante Jimenez, the group’s founding chairman, said Duterte was not behind the complaint.
He also slammed political analyst Ramon Casiple of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms who claimed the VACC was identified with the ruling Partido ng Demokratikong Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan.
“Let me correct you, sir. The only connection we have is our advocacy against crime, illegal drugs and corruption,” Jimenez said.
“So please refrain from doing that, professor Casiple, because we are not a political unit.”
Alvarez said the House committee on justice must conduct thorough hearings on the Sereno complaint, along with the other impeachment cases, to find out if there was enough evidence to pin her down as well as the others.
“We can do the automatic transmittal of the impeachment complaint if we wish to do so,” Alvarez told reporters.
“But we won’t do it. We want thorough hearings on the impeachment complaints to find out if there is enough evidence or there is none, whether it can stand trial in an impeachment court.”
A creeping impeachment was adopted in the 15th Congress in 2011 during the impeachment of Chief justice Renato Corona, when 188 lawmakers signed as endorsers to the complaint even before it reached the House committee on justice for hearings.
The complaint”•having obtained the required one-third of the signatures of the total House members”•was then transmitted to the Senate for trial.
Corona was impeached in 2012 for failing to truthfully disclose his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth. He died of a heart attack on April 29, 2016 at the age of 67.