(Eagle News) — Maria Lourdes Sereno on Wednesday, May 30, filed a motion for reconsideration of the Supreme Court ruling nullifying her appointment as Chief Justice.
It was Sereno’s lawyers, and not Sereno herself, who filed the MR of the May 11 decision past 4 p.m. before the High Court.
In the 205-page motion for reconsideration, Sereno argued that the May 11 SC decision should be reversed as, among others, her right to due process was violated, the only way to remove an impeachable official such as the Chief Justice was via impeachment, and that the conclusions made by the High Court that led to the nullification of her appointment were based on unproven premises.
For the first, the SC said her right to due process was infringed upon when six Supreme Court justices refused to inhibit from the case “despite their extreme bias and prejudice against her” as supposedly evidenced by their pronouncements.
She was referring to Justices Teresita Leonardo-De Castro, Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Francis Jardeleza, Samuel Martires and Noel Tijam, whom she asked to inhibit earlier.
The justices, however, refused.
All six, along with Andres Reyes Jr., and Alexander Gesmundo, went on to vote to grant the quo warranto petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida against her.
Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, Justices Presbitero Velasco Jr., Mariano Del Castillo, Estela Perlas Bernabe, Marvic Leonen, and Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa voted against the petition.
“This is essentially a plea to the Honorable Court to do what is right and just. And the right and just thing to do, as dictated by the Respondent’s fundamental right to due process, is to disqualify the six Honorable Justices who had lost the impartiality to hear and decide this case; and to reverse the Decision of 11 May 2018,” Sereno said.
She said the same right was violated when her counsel was supposedly not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses testifying against her.
Only impeachment
According to Sereno, the SC should “strictly adhere to Section 2, Article XI of the Constitution—as it was intended by the framers, understood by the people, and implemented consistently by the SC in its past decisions….”
In short, she said that based on the Constitution, impeachment was the only way to remove an impeachable official from office.
“The independence of the judiciary turns on this Court’s adherence to this rule. The proverbial path to perdition which the majority of this Court has taken that is paved mainly with the intention of removing the Chief Justice by any means, can lead only to the destruction of judicial independence and the separation of powers,” Sereno said.
“That is a consequence, unintended as it may be, that the Respondent earnestly asks this Court to veer away from,” she added.
“Baseless conclusions”
Overall, Sereno said the SC “made baseless conclusions that are unsupported by the evidence..”
For instance, she said there was “no evidence to support” the tax fraud she supposedly committed.
As for the SC conclusion her “integrity was not established at the time of her application” to the Chief Justice post since she did not file her Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth when she was teaching at the University of the Philippines, Sereno said that her constitutional right to due process was ignored when the High Court “ignored evidence” that she had filed such.
“The matters that were never raised by either party are actually mere allegations or charges raised in the impeachment complaint before the House of Representatives, all of which have yet to be proven. Since the allegations stated therein are nothing more than mere charges, they cannot be taken as evidence against the Chief Justice,” she said.