Sereno's fate
I can give several reasons why an IQ score may or may be not a reliable measure of a person's intelligence. For sure, an IQ test aims to measure the intelligence of a person based on his performance on that particular day. I can score average-level on a bad day and genius-level on a good day.
Likewise, there could be a hundred psychological tests and assessments to make an expert conclusion that a person is psychologically unfit for the job, much more so if he or she is a powerful and consequential figure like the president or the chief justice. When your boss calls you a fool, go ahead, call her crazy. Hopefully, you both have a good laugh over it.
There could be as many experts as there are politicians who can make different or totally opposing conclusions about a leader. And there could be countless angles and framing in presenting such conclusions in the news media depending on the level of the public relations spin that power and influence can afford.
That is why we have clear-cut laws and rules of procedure, none of which prescribe IQ and psychological exams on the basic pre-requisites to become president, vice president, chief justice, and ombudsman -high posts that can only be vacated through an impeachment process, aside from death and resignation.
So what is this bustle about Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno's supposedly low scores in an IQ exam and a psychological test? By the way, I read somewhere that a psychological test is different from a psychological assessment, the latter being more comprehensive. How about a psychiatric assessment, does it measure differently from a psychological assessment?
My point is we should be critical of this political rigmarole being played out by seasoned top dogs in the national scene. They have all the resources they need to step up their game and keep it going. Don't let them waste yours.
In her book "Hours Before Dawn: The Fall and Uncertain Rise of the Philippine Supreme Court," journalist and Supreme Court observer Maritess D. Vitug made a detailed narrative and assessment of the rise and fall of the late chief justice Renato Corona during the respective presidencies of Gloria Arroyo and Noynoy Aquino.
Vitug noted that the impeachment trial of Corona was a "valuable exercise in the pursuit of transparency," helping to make sense of a Court that "ordinarily, would be wrapped with the blanket of seclusion."
I'm curious about how Vitug views the impeachment proceeding, this time, against Chief Justice Sereno. Or, like me, she might just have been deliberately panning over the issue as if it weren't there, turning away from the serpentine images in the televised proceedings at the congressional committee.
Based on earlier reports, it's not clear whether the chief justice has taken an "indefinite leave" or a "wellness leave." But as the National Union of People's Lawyers described later, Sereno's taking an indefinite leave exposes the "widening cracks in the Supreme Court."
It's something that Sereno should have anticipated early on in her stint as chief justice. She is relatively young and her appointment by former president Aquino, from a list submitted by the Judicial and Bar Council, bypassed several senior associate justices. There are several implications one could ascribe there.
Yet, to recall, after learning of Sereno's appointment as chief justice, the late senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago described her fellow UP Law professorial lecturer as a brilliant jurist "who could very well stand on her own merits."
The head of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines back then also described Sereno as capable of reforming the judiciary, possessing the independence, idealism, and competence required of her position.
Now, the political winds have changed. And it's quite a storm for Sereno, like a deus ex machina drastically altering her image before the public and her fate as a magistrate.
Will she survive this steadily brewing political storm and emerge as a better primus inter pares (the "first among equals") in the Supreme Court?
Or will she yield to the axe of her executioners, and leave a Supreme Court in the same condition before and during her stint as chief justice; that so-called "weakest branch of government" whose only source of power – its constitutional and moral moorings– have historically been unable to withstand the undercurrents of the bigger struggle for political and economic dominance in the country.
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