(Eagle News) — The lawyer who filed an impeachment complaint against then Chief-Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno has asked the Supreme Court to stop the grant to ABS-CBN of a provisional authority to operate pending the renewal of its franchise.
In its 20-page petition for prohibition, lawyer Larry Gadon asked the SC to order Gamaliel Cordoba, National Telecommunications Commission chair, to refrain from complying with the Feb. 26 letter issued by Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and franchise committee chair Franz Alvarez for the grant.
According to Gadon, the orders contained in the letter were, after all, “without or in excess of NTC’s or (Cordoba’s) jurisdiction.”
Gadon said Cayetano and Alvarez should also be told to “cease and desist” from “pursuing the matters indicated” in the letter for “being grossly violative of the law.”
“The separation of powers is a fundamental principle in our system of government…Each department of the government has exclusive cognizance of matters within its jurisdiction, and is supreme within its own sphere,” Gadon said.
ABSCBN’s franchise is set to expire in May.
