House panel kills impeach complaint vs 7 Supreme Court justices

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives committee on justice voted 23-1 yesterday to kill the impeachment complaints against Chief Justice Teresita de Castro and six other Supreme Court (SC)justices by finding them lacking in substance.

“The complaints are hereby declared by this committee to be insufficient in substance and dismissed,” Mindoro Oriental Rep. Salvador Leachon, committee chairman, announced after the lopsided vote.

The announcement capped the committee’s second impeachment hearing, which Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo briefly attended. She made no statement.

Opposition Reps. Edcel Lagman of Albay, Teodoro Baguilat Jr. of Ifugao and Gary Alejano of Magdalo filed the complaints.

Siquijor Rep. Ramon Rocamora, a former Liberal Party mate of Lagman and Baguilat who has jumped to the ruling PDP-Laban party, presented the motion to declare the complaints sufficient in substance.

He was the lone committee member to vote for his motion. The three complainants are not members of the panel.

The 23 members who voted against the Rocamora motion included House leaders who are ex-officio members, the committee’s vice chairmen and Vincent Crisologo of Quezon City, who arrived at the hearing five minutes before the voting.

Lagman later criticized the committee in a news conference.

“Judiciousness and fairness are alien attributes of the committee on justice. Substance was in fact overriding but partisanship was more ascendant,” he said.

Addressing their colleagues on what they were supposed to vote on at the start of the hearing, Leachon and Lagman both cited the impeachment rules, which provide: “The requirement of substance is met if there is a recital of facts constituting the offense charged and determinative of the jurisdiction of the committee.” 

“Consequently, the finding of sufficiency in substance is confined and limited to the allegations in the complaint. Under the foregoing standard, the herein impeachment complaints are sufficient in substance because there are recital of facts constituting the offenses charged of culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust,” Lagman said.

He said the committee should not “look for evidence nor tackle the merits of the complaints because that would come when it proceeds to determine probable cause to impeach the respondents.”

Lagman said the seven justices violated the Constitution when they ousted former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno by favoring the quo warranto case Solicitor General Jose Calida had filed against her, knowing that the only way to remove impeachable officers like members of the Supreme Court is the impeachment process.

All seven were accused of violating the Charter: De Castro and Justices Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Andres Reyes Jr., Francis Jardeleza, Noel Tijam and Alexander Gesmundo.

Additionally, De Castro, Peralta, Bersamin, Jardeleza and Tijam were charged with betrayal of public trust “for refusing to inhibit themselves from the Calida quo warranto petition despite their continuing ill will, prejudice and bias against then chief justice Sereno.”

Among those who spoke for finding the complaints lacking in substance were vice chairman Vicente Veloso of Leyte, Jesulito Manalo of party-list group Angkla, Strike Revilla of Cavite and Alfredo Garbin Jr. of Ako Bicol. Most of them came to the reading with prepared statements.

Veloso, a former Court of Appeals justice, disputed the argument of Lagman, Baguilat and Alejano that impeachable officers could be removed only through impeachment.

He said another legal means of removal is the quo warranto proceeding resorted to by Calida in the case of Sereno.

Veloso said impeachment is used if an officer “commits infractions while in office, while a quo warranto case questions the qualification of such an officer.”

He said there is no constitutional provision or law giving Congress the exclusive power to remove an impeachable official.

Revilla said he is not a lawyer and would not concern himself with “legalese.”

As a layman, he said the seven justices “only did their job and should not be punished for it.”

Like Veloso, Garbin said there are other ways of ousting impeachable officers.

“In the case of the President, under the Constitution, majority of the Cabinet could declare him unable to continue doing his job,” he said.

Rocamora said the refusal of De Castro, Peralta, Bersamin, Jardeleza and Tijam to inhibit themselves from the Calida quo warranto petition despite their testimonies against Sereno in the impeachment hearings of the committee on justice troubled him.

“I ask you colleagues in the committee, could you close your eyes to those testimonies and say that those five justices acted with impartiality in handling the quo warranto petition against then chief justice Sereno? I say they did not, and as judges, they must not be partial but must be perceived as impartial,” he said. 

Before the hearing adjourned, Lagman said he would file a motion for reconsideration, but Leachon said the impeachment rules do not allow such a motion.

Calida yesterday lauded the House of Representatives for dismissing the impeachment complaint against seven Supreme Court justices over the ouster of chief justice Sereno.

In a statement, the top government lawyer believed that the dismissal of the complaint by the House justice committee for insufficiency in substance was expected.

“As expected and as the OSG said before, the impeachment cases against Supreme Court Chief Justice De Castro, and Associate Justices Peralta, Bersamin, Jardeleza, Tijam, Reyes and Gesmundo will not see the light of day,” he reiterated.

Calida stressed that the justices should not be impeached as they only performed their solemn duty of interpreting the Constitution even in the face of strong political and social currents.

He pointed out that the decisive action of chairman Leachon and the 23 members of the House justice committee preserved the independence of the judiciary from baseless attacks of opposition legislators.

Calida urged critics to “move on” from the ouster of Sereno.

“Now, for the alleged ‘magnificent’ representatives who filed these baseless impeachment cases, the House committee on justice had just spoken. Will you now turn your ire on the committee members because they did not follow your flawed constitutional interpretation?” he said. – With Edu Punay