Dissenting from the High Court majority that voted to oust the 24th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (SC), Maria Lourdes P.A. Sereno, earlier this year, Associate Justice Benjamin Caguioa blasted the tribunal for having committed seppuku without honor.
“I view with deep shame and regret this day when the Court has ousted one of its sitting Members upon the prodding of a mere agency of a separate coordinate department,” Caguioa wrote in his dissent.
Sereno was removed when the court’s majority favored a quo warranto petition filed by the Office of the Solicitor General questioning her fitness for office on account of allegedly failing to consistently submit her statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth as mandated by law.
In a move that underscored how deeply flawed the court’s decision was, the oldest supposed automatic nominee to replace Sereno, Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio officially turned down his nomination.
“I have to be consistent with my position, that the quo warranto is not the proper way to remove a sitting member of the Court. So I don’t want to benefit from the decision to which I disagreed,” Carpio said.
In contrast, Teresita Leonardo de Castro last week benefited from the decision to which she agreed, becoming, in historical order, the 25th SC Chief Justice upon her appointment by President Rodrigo Duterte.
De Castro was one of the associate justices who trooped to the Lower House to testify against Sereno when that chamber of the legislature was still engaged in a doomed expedition of fishing for evidence to impeach Sereno.
Finding their task of removing Sereno an uphill one, the Lower House dragged its feet and let the quo warranto proceeding go on, with De Castro being among those who sat in judgment over Sereno.
Court critics had expected De Castro and others to inhibit themselves from the case against Sereno. That was the least they could have done if they were interested at all in projecting not only the court’s substantial but also apparent impartiality.
Alas, the abomination that was their refusal to recuse themselves was for De Castro and her cohorts but a minor one compared to their contorted jurisprudence that contradicts the 1987 Constitution: A Chief Justice may only be removed via impeachment at the Lower House and conviction at the Senate.
So the 25th Chief Justice presides over a post-seppuku court, functional but beholden to Malacañang (with several members facing impeachment complaints), shocking if it should check presidential and congressional power, and marginal and dishonorable to many who no longer find the court a reliable front in the war to defend democracy.
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