BAGUIA
The things I will never forget from Chief Justice Maria Lourdes P.A.
Sereno when she spoke to us and guests at the University of the Philippines Cebu last Thursday, fifth of April have to do not only with law but also with journalism and with most things in life.
That — how a woman in high office is now compelled to deliver lengthy discourse about basic things in life — says a lot about our current socio-political situation.
The Chief Justice said, among other things, that for nine months only one side of the story had dominated the public sphere.
She was referring to the side that has painted her as a crook who has mismanaged the judiciary while sitting as the highest magistrate without the requisite qualifications.
This is the side of the story being propagated by one lawyer Lorenzo Gadon who claimed under oath in filing an impeachment case against her that his assertions were based on personal knowledge when in fact they were not.
The situation prompted Chief Justice Serenon to once again dare those who accused her to let their charges be tested i the Senate convened as an impeachment court — the only court before which an impeachable official like her is answerable to according to the 1987 Philippine Constitution.
In law, every person is entitled to face his or her accusers in court.
In journalism, we teach aspiring scribes to scrupulously report and interpret the news and to make sure that storytelling represents everyone involved in the story, that storytelling does not suppress or distort essential facts.
After I had a fight with a friend at the basketball court when in elementary school, the guidance counselor called me and him to her office so that we could settle our dispute amicably after she had given each of us time to tell our respective side of the story.
Yesterday the President short-circuited our humane tradition of listening to one another’s stories by advancing the contrived narrative that the Chief Justice is bad for the country and should be forced out of office.
In the face of such unfairness and injustice we must all remember that we have not yet heard the story of the Chief Justice about the things of which she has been accused, and that none of us but the members of the Senate are in a position to give Chief Justice Sereno the platform to tell her story.
Indeed, as she also implied, the delay in the impeachment trial is an indication of her accuser’s fear of the truth, their fear that their false charges will not withstand the severe tests of a full-blown trial.
Anyone who has gone to the Sacrament of Confession knows the reserves of courage it requires of the penitent, so that he or she may face the truth of his sins in the light of the mercy of the Almighty.
The attempt to overthrow the Chief Justice by a method other than a trial that allows her to present evidence in support of her case reeks of the terror that orcs feel in broad daylight.
The Chief Justice, for her part, in her openness to trial has already succeeded in showing moral courage. As Harper Lee put on the mouth of the hero of “To Kill A Mockingbird,” the lawyer Atticus Finch, courage is not a man with a gun in his hand but is going through something knowing that you get licked in the end, but going through it anyway.
Perhaps it should not be the Chief Justice who must worry about preparing a defense. Even if she should be removed in the end, it will be those who have tried to put her to shame who will be left without any defense for their acts of ignominy.
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