God save the constitution

Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno faces a double-barrel, two-pronged attack. Sometime last year, a certain Atty. Larry Gadon filed a verified complaint with the House of Representatives, charging the chief justice with improprieties and violation of the Internal Rules of the Supreme Court, based on hearsay evidence.

The chairman of the House committee on justice, despite his knowledge that the allegations in the complaint were not based on personal knowledge, gave due course to the complaint. That started the rigmarole in the House where witnesses were presented to twist the truth.

The hearing was a spectacle of unfairness and injustice. The lawyer of Chief Justice Sereno could not cross-examine the witnesses. Some justices of the Supreme threw caution to the winds when they testified against the chief justice and washed their dirty linens at the House.

It has been many months since the House terminated the hearing against respondent Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. But until now, the House has not transmitted the articles of Impeachment to the Senate as mandated by the Constitution.

The reason is obvious. The House leadership is totally convinced that the evidence against the chief justice is weak. What is the solution? Let Malacañang, through Solicitor General Jose Calida, apply the “final solution” by filing a petition for quo warranto with the Supreme Court against Chief Justice Sereno.

The chief justice is holding her ground against all odds. Some Supreme Court Justices who testified against Sereno before the House committee, accusing her of wrongdoing and had prejudged her, refused to inhibit themselves in the quo warranto case, thus throwing out all sense of dalicadeza to gutter.

Most alarming are the rantings of a vindictive president who had in at least two occasions, subjected the female chief justice to the most savage and merciless personal attacks never before seen in the history of the presidency of this country.

The last time I read the constitution is that it mandates that the only and only way of removing a chief justice and all impeachable officials is through impeachment. Only Congress through the Senate, not the Supreme Court, can oust a sitting chief justice.

But Malacañang and some Supreme Court justices want the ouster of Sereno through the easier and faster means via quo warranto. This is pure and simple constitutional suicide.

In the final analysis, it is not Chief Justice Sereno who is destroyed but the constitution and the entire democratic system. The final descent to authoritarian rule is inevitable.

God save the constitution from personal vendetta and ruthless ambition. God save the constitution from all forms of abuse and despotism. But ultimately, borrowing the words of U.S. President Kennedy, “here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.” – Democrito C. Barcenas