SUPREME COURT (SC) Associate Justice Teresita J. Leonardo-de Castro on Wednesday testified before the House committee on justice hearing the impeachment complaint against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P.A. Sereno
In the course of her testimony, Ms. De Castro downplayed reports that she gave Ms. Sereno a tongue-lashing after the Chief Justice supposedly altered the ruling in a temporary restraining order (TRO) that Ms. De Castro drafted.
The associate justice said the reports were “exaggerated,” explaining that she might have said what was on her mind in an “emphatic” manner during deliberations of the Supreme Court en banc, “but after the en banc, we eat together. Hindi po kami nag-aaway (We are not fighting).”
Lorenzo G. Gadon, the lawyer seeking Ms. Sereno’s impeachment, had alleged that she committed culpable violation of the Constitution by tampering with a TRO of the SC in G.R. No. 206844-45 (Coalition of Associations of Senior Citizens in the Philippines v. COMELEC).
Asked by lawmakers, Ms. De Castro said the consolidated two cases involving the coalition – also known as the Senior Citizens’ Party-list — were raffled to her in May 2013, after the midterm elections that year.
‘TAKEN ABACK’
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) earlier issued a resolution disqualifying the party-list group, which nevertheless garnered enough votes to earn it a seat in the House of Representatives. Ms. De Castro said she thought it would be unfair to the party-list to be disqualified given the votes it received.
At the time, the high court was in recess. Ms. De Castro said she had prepared a synopsis explaining the case to Ms. Sereno, as well as a draft TRO where she “explicitly” recommended the issuance of a TRO to the Comelec to prevent it from implementing its resolution.
Given the urgency of the matter, she submitted her recommendation to Ms. Sereno’s office, which received it at the “first hour” in the morning of May 29, 2013. At the time, only 14 party-lists were proclaimed winners by the Comelec.
Come afternoon, 53 party-lists were already proclaimed, prompting Ms. De Castro to worry that the Senior Citizens’ Party-list might lose its seat.
Ms. De Castro said that by the time Ms. Sereno arrived at the office, it was already in the afternoon — a “very late” hour. She said she had followed up the matter with the Chief Justice’s office throughout the day, but Ms. Sereno allegedly did not even call her up to discuss it with her.
When the TRO was released by Ms. Sereno, Ms. De Castro said she was “taken aback” because it attributed to her the recommendation that the Comelec stop proclaiming all remaining party-lists.
Ms. De Castro added that the Comelec resolution in question was not even referred to in the TRO.
She then wrote Ms. Sereno a letter to say that the TRO should only involve the Senior Citizens’ Party-list, as it was “very basic” that anyone who was not involved in a case should not be included in it.
Ms. De Castro said she also mentioned that the TRO from Ms. Sereno would violate the right of the party-lists to due process of law, and asked Ms. Sereno why she stopped the proclamation of the other groups.
The high court en banc took up the matter and decided to issue a status quo ante order. Ms. De Castro explained that the TRO was rescinded in the sense that it no longer covered all party-list groups, and that it now specifically referred only to the Senior Citizens’ Party-list.
Ms. Sereno’s spokespersons, in a press release, noted Ms. De Castro’s “mere recommendatory power.”
“The Chief Justice, during recess, is expressly empowered to ‘act’ on urgent cases requiring immediate action, even without the recommendation of the Member-in-Charge,” they said.
“The Chief Justice could not be accused of falsifying anything. In the exercise of her own discretion and authority to issue TROs when the Court is in recess, the Chief Justice elected to issue a temporary restraining order under terms she considered just and proper,” the spokespersons also said.
They explained further: “Justice De Castro had recommended the issuance of a TRO against a COMELEC Resolution, albeit limited to the petitioners in G.R. Nos. 206844 to 45. However, the assailed COMELEC Resolution actually affected party-list candidates other than those in G.R. Nos. 206844-45.”
“It also happened that a petition filed by another party-list candidate and docketed as G.R. No. 206952, had questioned the same COMELEC Resolution. G.R. No. 206952 was raffled to then Associate Justice Bienvenido L. Reyes. Justice Reyes had also recommended the issuance of a TRO against the COMELEC Resolution.”
“Upon the Chief Justice’s evaluation, the COMELEC Resolution could not be restrained in favor of one group but allowed to continue against others. For this reason, the TRO she issued was not limited to the petitioners in G.R. Nos. 206844-45.”
‘FABRICATION’
Earlier in her testimony, Ms. De Castro also raised the serious protest she had lodged against Ms. Sereno’s alleged misrepresentation of the en banc’s Nov. 27, 2012 deliberations on the creation of the Regional Court Administrator’s Office in Region 7 (RCAO-7).
Ms. Sereno’s alleged “fabrication” of a resolution that misrepresented the intent of the en banc on the RCAO-7 – merely to study the need for, not yet create the office — was one of the grounds for impeachment listed in the complaint by lawyer Lorenzo G. Gadon.
Ms. Sereno’s Administrative Order 175-2012 revives the Regional Court Administration Office-7 (RCAO-7) in Cebu City. The order was meant to decentralize the Manila-based Office of the Court Administrator under Jose Midas P. Marquez but was implemented without the required approval of the en banc.
Fielding questions mainly from Majority Leader Rodolfo C. Fariñas, Ms. De Castro said that after she wrote Sereno to protest the issuance of the resolution that reflected the supposed “ratification” by the en banc, in its Nov. 27, 2012, deliberations, of the revival of RCAO-7, the en banc met anew on the matter and issued a new resolution.
Prodded by Mr. Fariñas, Ms. De Castro said the en banc resolution “effectively overturned” the resolution issued by Sereno.
“The exchanges among the justice was clear, to just create a study group and the Chief Justice even said I will amend my Administrative Order, and I was relying on that,” Ms. De Castro said, adding that she had also taken issue with Sereno’s move to designate Judge Geraldine Faith Econg — someone outside the Office of Court Administrator and accountable only to the Chief Justice — to head RCAO-7.
Asked if Ms. Sereno replied to her letter protesting the apparent misrepresentation, De Castro replied, “Hindi po [No, sir]. She did not reply at all.”
Even during the deliberations (the matter was again taken up on Dec. 7), Ms. De Castro said Ms. Sereno did not explain why she issued AO 175.
In the Dec. 11, 2012 deliberations, the en banc subsequently decided to form a study committee to revisit the need to revive the RCAO and decentralize the functions of the Office of the Court Administrator, and designated Associate Justice Jose Perez to head the study group.
“It is a subtle way of overturning” Ms. Sereno’s issuance of her resolution, said Ms. De Castro, noting that “we didn’t want to embarrass” the Chief Justice.
“I’m not after putting her down, I just want to correct what has been done to put things in order as decided by the court in previous resolutions,” the associate justice added.
Lawyers for Sereno, who have been sending running commentaries to the media, asserted that the “SC en banc approved the creation of Regional Court Administrative Office (RCAO) in Region 7.”
Ms. Sereno’s counsel said: “It is false to say that the Chief Justice acted unilaterally and without the knowledge of the Court En Banc when she issued AO No. 175-2012. Precisely, the creation of said office, its budget as well as the designation of its staff, had already been approved and delineated in earlier Resolutions of the Court. The Chief Justice, after studying the problems besetting far-flung courts, simply implemented these earlier Court En Banc resolutions creating an RCAO in the seventh judicial region,” Ms. Sereno’s lawyers said, adding:
“Contrary to Complainant’s baseless allegations, there is no En Banc Resolution nullifying, superseding or otherwise ‘scrapping’ the Supreme Court’s resolutions creating the RCAO-7, including the assailed 27 November 2012 Resolution in A.M. No.12-11-9-SC.”
In a press statement also on Wednesday, the Sereno camp said: “Although the AO No. 175-2012 of the Chief Justice dated 9 November 2012 refers to the Judiciary Decentralized Office, she was not creating a new office, she was referring to RCAO-7.”
“This is clear from the AO No. 175-2012 itself which designates the Head of the JDO pursuant to En Banc Resolution of the Court in A.M. No. 06-11-09-SC dated 14 November 2006, which had created the RCAO-7.”
“The En Banc Resolution dated 27 November 2012 is clear that what it ratified was the action of the Chief Justice — ‘to revive the Regional Court Administration Office in Region 7.’ Even Justice de Castro’s 3 December 2012 letter to the Chief Justice itself expresses the Court’s supposed consensus on the JDO as a consensus ‘opposing the reopening of RCAO-7.’”
For his part, Mr. Fariñas said, reading Ms. De Castro’s letter, that the said administrative order “has transgressed the said constitutional authority of the court en banc and the statutory authority of the Office of the Court Administrator.”
The House leader also noted that PD No. 828, creating the Office of the Court Administrator in the Supreme Court, stated that the Chief Justice can only appoint staff with the approval of the court en banc.
Mr. Marquez, for his part, gave lawmakers a background of why the RCAO concept came to be, during the term of Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban, Jr., in 2006, as a move to decentralize the OCA functions to boost its fiscal responsibility, accountability and efficiency. — Tricia Aquino and Lira Dalangin-Fernandez of News5/interaksyon.com
