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| Photo file from ABS CBN (ctto) |
The opposition senators in the Senate are
out and trying to make some damage control to former President Benigno Aquino
III appointee Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.
News got out that the other justices of the
Supreme Court pressured the Chief Justice to file for an indefinite leave to
preserve the Supreme Court as an institution. Supporter of the Chief Justice has
speculated that this is a subtle move by the justices in ousting Sereno from
being the top magistrate other than impeachment.
Opposition senators Francisco Pangilinan and Antonio
Trillanes IV, in separate statements slammed this move against Chief Justice
Maria Lourdes Sereno.
“Any attempt to remove the Chief Justice through a
process other than impeachment is unconstitutional. It will be a brazen
usurpation of the exclusive power of Congress under the Constitution,”
Trillanes said in a statement.
“May I remind these justices that any unconstitutional
act they commit now, can be used as a ground for impeachment against them later
on under a different administration,”
the senator from Bicol warned.
Trillanes further clarifies that any justice of the
Supreme Court can also be charged and eventually prosecuted from graft when
they have retired under a new administration.
Senator Francisco “Kiko” Pangilinan, a known Liberal
Party diehard and its current president, states that the allegations against CJ
Sereno re her failure to file her complete Sereno's Statements of Assets,
Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALNs) may not be as strong as some quarters may
believe them to be.
Pangilinan further
reiterates that if one is going to be strict in the interpretation of the 1987
Constitution, there is nothing in its provisions that requires the filing of a Statements
of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALNs) to be a member of the Supreme
Court.
Being a former of
the Judicial Bar Council (JBC),he was part of the Council that recommended her
appointment to then president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III without any mention
of SALN filing. *
“But of course the JBC can come out
with other rules. But if you will ask me, there is no other way to remove an
impeachable official but through impeachment,” he told in an interview.
Source: Philstar
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