By Ade S. Fajardo
Former Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno was targeted for impeachment in August 2017, or a little more than one year after Rodrigo Roa Duterte ascended to the presidency.
The impeachment complaint against Sereno was anchored on her supposed failure to file certain statements of net worth (SALN) when she was a professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law, or way before she was appointed to the highest court of the land.
The grounds were quite a stretch, and flimsy when compared with the current allegations against Vice President Sara Duterte.
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Yet the House of Representatives at the time, under the speakership of Pantaleon Alvarez, found probable cause that Sereno betrayed public trust, and was guilty of corruption and other high crimes.
This was after witnesses were subpoenaed and presented before the committee on justice.
To recall, even members of the Judicial and Bar Council, the constitutional body that screens nominees to the judiciary, were summoned and made to explain their nomination of Sereno.
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Sereno incurred the ire of the Duterte administration when she publicly expressed the Supreme Court’s sole power to discipline or sanction judges tagged as coddlers of drug pushers and addicts.
The impeachment proceedings were subsequently declared moot when Sereno’s own colleagues, in a narrow vote, expelled her from office via a quo warranto petition filed by then Solicitor General Jose Calida.
The fact, however, is that the House committee on justice took its sweet time receiving evidence against Sereno, only to eventually yield to the quo warranto decision rendered by the Supreme Court.
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A group of lawyers has asked the Supreme Court to declare as unconstitutional the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte at the House of Representatives.
They seek to halt the hearings being held by the House and its committee on justice chaired by Batangas Representative Gerville Luistro.
These lawyers contend that there was procedural overreach when the committee approved motions to subpoena bank records and documents from the National Bureau of Investigation.
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As mentioned, these things are not new. Sereno underwent the same procedure.
The House rules on impeachment expressly allow the committee on justice to conduct hearings, issue subpoena to witnesses and compel the production of documents.
The House may even provide protection for complainants or witnesses if it is shown that their personal safety is in jeopardy because of their participation in an impeachment proceeding.
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Some kibitzers insist that the Senate is the proper venue for presentation of evidence since it has the constitutional mandate to conduct a trial.
The House Rules, however, requires that a finding that probable cause exists must be supported by evidence adduced before the justice committee. This necessarily implies reception of evidence at the level of the committee.
The committee must itself be convinced that the evidence of guilt is strong because it is the House that will prove the articles of impeachment after they are filed in the Senate./WDJ