IT is facile and ultimately wrong, as many international news reports do, to portray the ouster of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno as a harbinger of doom for Philippine democracy and a sign that President Rodrigo Duterte is snuffing out all voices of dissent to bring about one-man rule.
To reduce the Sereno case to these outcomes would be to ignore the circumstances around the chief justice’s removal from office, as well as the overall political landscape in which this drama has played out.
For example, outsiders who report on Sereno’s removal consistently fail to put it in the context of the aggressive campaign that her patron, then President Benigno Aquino III, waged from 2011 to 2012 to oust her predecessor, Chief Justice Renato Corona. In that vicious campaign, Aquino left no stone unturned–orchestrating an aggressive and constant barrage of negative reports in the press about Corona and his family, and blatantly bribing lawmakers using pork barrel—to remove Corona by impeachment.
When he succeeded, Aquino moved swiftly to replace Corona with a more sympathetic and politically friendly chief justice, forgetting that there were qualifications to be met. One of these was also the weapon used against Corona during his impeachment trial —the failure to submit an accurate statement of assets, liabilities and net worth.
Prior to the Aquino-led witch hunt, failure to submit an accurate SALN was not even considered an impeachable offense. Sereno’s patron, Mr. Aquino, changed all that—for Corona, Sereno and everyboy else.
Much is being made, too, about the fact that Sereno was removed by a quo warranto petition rather than the constitutionally prescribed method, impeachment. Sereno herself has made this her battle cry, demanding her day in court before a Senate impeachment trial.
Yet nobody can dispute the logic in the application of a quo warranto petition. First, the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the law. Second, Sereno would not enjoy the constitutional protection afforded to her impeachable position if she were found to have illegally occupied it all these years in the first place. If she occupied her position illegally, as the Supreme Court has found, then she may be removed by means other than impeachment.
Of course, Sereno’s removal may have implications on other appointed officials, but then, so did Mr. Aquino’s actions seven years ago, when he moved heaven and earth to remove the head of the judiciary. While all that was happening, Sereno, then an associate justice, offered no warning that this executive interference was a danger to judicial independence. Quite to the contrary, she helped Aquino oust a sitting chief justice—perhaps in the secret hope that she would be chosen one day to replace him.
This is the person that her supporters and allies today point to as a defender of democracy and as a beacon of righteousness wronged by the system. But like her colleagues in the Supreme Court, and armed with the knowledge of what went ahead, we simply don’t buy that.
