Now that President Duterte has named Associate Justice Teresita-de Castro as the new Chief Justice, there is no way that the impeachment case filed by four House independent minority members led by Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman last Aug. 24 will ever pass muster, even at the committee level.
The newly appointed CJ is one of seven magistrates charged by Lagman and his colleagues, Ifugao Representative Teddy Baguilat and Party List Congressmen Gary Alejano (Magdalo) and Tom Villarin (Akbayan) for their alleged “unconstitutional act” in voting to affirm the ouster of then CJ Maria Lourdes Sereno based on the quo warranto case filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida.
To the four legislators the act of the seven justices was “not only bereft of constitutional anchorage but a blatant subterfuge, an orchestrated charade” which amounted to a betrayal of public trust and, perhaps, in their own reckoning, rising to high crimes and misdemeanor-two of the grounds for impeachment of impeachable public officials.
Well, they had two days of page-one media coverage all right, complete with the usual self-righteous push for the Judicial and Bar Council to strike out de Castro and two other CJ candidates, Associate Justices Lucas Bersamin and Diosdado Peralta, from the list. With this appointment, that demand for JBC to hold off has been breached. Given their long-held antipathy against President Duterte, are they going to file a case against him as well for not heeding their injunction to this his bounded constitutional duty? They can try. But that will be another story.
In any event, a reading of their charge sheet betrays the group’s sheer disregard for the basics of judicial and even legislative authority. For one how can they in conscience put the seven in the wringer while cavalierly insisting that the eighth member of the High Court who also voted for Sereno’s ouster, Ombudsman Samuel Martires, is exempt from any of the alleged culpability just because he has been put in charge of another office? That is not only a lame excuse. It is a cop out. If they really believe that the eight justices who voted to oust Sereno are guilty, then they cannot by that short hand simply waive the culpability away. After all, Ombudsman Martires is himself an impeachable official so they could have just easily included him in the charge sheet. They cannot be selective, one way or the other. They cannot have their cake and eat it too.
That cavalier arrangement was in fact a giveaway as one reads the charge. The claim is that the eight justices violated the Constitution by voting in a case presented before them just because the four impeachers and their allies, in and out of Congress, do not agree with their decision. By insisting that they should have voted the case their way, they are in effect insisting that the Court can and should be bended to their liking. What kind of logic is that? I thought these guys are law for the rule of law and judicial independence.
As SolGen Calida himself noted with a tinge of sarcasm, what Lagman and company did was to shame the House as an institution by misusing one of its principal authorities, in this case as an impeachment originator, in haranguing who in their view are impeachable officials who act in accord with their best lights in doing their duties but who do not subscribe to their wishes and agenda.
Said Calida: “If the opposition legislators’ logic will be followed then all justices whose constitutional interpretation differ from them, can be impeached. Worst, following also this logic, justices who dissented from the majority view in constitutional cases can also be impeached. This will reduce impeachment to a mere vengeance mechanism far from which it is intended for.”
How true. This maybe the reason why no less than Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has said that she wants the speedy resolution of the impeachment case. She must have correctly surmised what the impeachers are up to which is to have a platform to shame the justices and ultimately delay the appointment of a new Chief Justice. It’s a contrivance of an impeachment; it does not have a place in any civil undertaking.
“The most important thing is to expedite it one way or the other so
that it does not really disturb the legislative agenda,” Arroyo said. This is just as well, given the tightness of the period to work on the budget and other more important national initiatives.
Tama na.