We live in interesting times

There's an old Chinese curse that goes: "May you live in interesting times." This saying was first used by Sir Austin Chamberlain in 1936 and later popularized by the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1966. I'm using this quote to say that indeed, we do live in interesting times, especially with our current troubles in the judiciary, where embattled Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno, who is facing a serious impeachment trial, has taken an indefinite 'leave of absence' that pundits insist is not embodied in the Rules of Court although this was suggested by the 13 associate justices of the Supreme Court.

Listening to both sides of the fence made ask: Can the Senate convict a sitting chief justice who is technically or officially on leave? I would like the Congress and the Senate to answer this question first before they convene the impeachment trial. For all you know, this is the very reason why Sereno went on leave in the first place, as a technical ploy to prevent her impeachment.

To add to the already confusing situation, Solicitor General Jose Calida filed a Quo Warranto petition before the Supreme Court last Monday to challenge the legality of Sereno's hold over her position as chief justice. A Quo Warranto proceeding is an action used to determine whether a person has legal right to hold public office. Wait a minute! Hold your horses right there! I thought that the only legal way to remove a sitting chief justice was via impeachment proceedings? Suddenly, there is another way that Calida is trying to use?

In a press conference that Calida himself called for, he insisted that a Quo Warranto proceeding is a "proper remedy to question the validity of Sereno's appointment." So where did Calida lodge his Quo Warranto complaint? Before the Supreme Court! So now the legal question is does the Supreme Court have jurisdiction over one of their own that would end up removing one of their own from office? Well, this question is easy for the SC to answer; either they would say that a Quo Warranto proceeding is legally in order or they would dismiss it outright for lack of jurisdiction.

What we'd like to ask is why did Calida filed his 34page Quo Warranto proceedings in the first place? His response was he is asking the Supreme Court to declare as void Sereno's appointment as chief justice because she flunked the test of integrity when she failed to file more or less 10 Statements of Assets, Liability and Net Worth (SALN) when she applied for the chief justice position in 2012. She did not only pass her psychiatric test, she even fired the psychologist who gave her that test.

In addition, Calida insisted that Sereno is just a "defacto chief justice" since her appointment to the position is invalid due to her failure to meet the SALN requirement of the Judicial and Bar Council. He also pointed out: "The writ of quo warranto is being sought to question the validity of her appointment; in turn, the impeachment complaint accuses her of committing culpable violation of Constitution and betrayal of public trust while in office."

Again, I would like to emphasize that this issue is more than enough to convict Sereno because this is the exact same problem that the late chief justice Renato Corona faced before the Senate trial and yet they convicted him for not revealing everything in his SALN, yet many senators say that he could still have corrected his SALN.

Apparently, Calida is not alone in this issue, Department of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre III also said: "If your appointment is void ab initio or invalid from the beginning, I believe that a petition for Quo Warranto will suffice to remove you from your position notwithstanding the fact that you are an impeachable official."

This is why in the beginning of this article; we wrote that we do live in interesting times. In the next few days or weeks, we will know whether the Supreme Court would decide on the legality of a Quo Warranto case on one of their own or dismiss this case for lack of jurisdiction, and off we go to that circus called an impeachment trial!

***

For email responses to this article, write to vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.