Malacanang has dismissed insinuations that it had masterminded a conspiracy to oust Maria Lourdes Sereno as the country’s chief justice.
In a radio interview, Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr reiterated that the Duterte administration had no hand in the ouster of Sereno.
Roque made the statement after former Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr said he immediately saw a “conspiracy” after the filing of Solicitor General Jose Calida’s petition for quo warranto and the succeeding calls for Sereno to resign.
“Well, I don’t know. You all know that the former Chief Justice (Davide) was also a politician. He was a former member of Interim Batasang Pambansa and the father of the governor of Cebu,” he told government-run radio dzRB.
“Let it go, let his background and let this relationship speak for themselves,” Roque said.
The Palace official denied that politics was behind the removal of Sereno, an appointee of former President Benigno Aquino.
“They claimed that there might be a political motive. The ouster of Chief Justice Sereno, there was no politics involved. The chief justice was the one at fault,” Roque said.
At a forum held at the Ateneo de Manila University on Thursday, Davide said a “conspiracy” was behind the ouster of Sereno, explaining it was started to pre-empt an impeachment bid that would have failed at the Senate.
“I considered the quo warranto as a pre-emptive move, believing that probably impeachment will not prosper. Impeachment will not prosper simply because the grounds stated in the complaint are not impeachable,” he said.
Davide was referring to Calida’s petition, which sought the nullification of Sereno’s appointment to the country’s highest judicial post over an alleged lack of integrity when she supposedly failed to file her Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth.
The Supreme Court granted the petition and ousted Sereno, 8-6, last week.
Had the impeachment complaint — an entirely different route to remove Sereno from office — reached the Senate, the legislative chamber would have “voted against it,” Davide said.
The House justice committee approved six articles of impeachment against Sereno after holding hearings on lawyer Lorenzo Gadon’s complaint over five months.
The charges include non-filing and non-submission of her asset declarations, issuance of court orders and resolutions that did not clear the Supreme Court en banc and misuse of P18mn in public funds, among others.
These await a vote by the plenary, which would decide whether the charges would be transmitted to the Senate for trial.
The House leadership has said the chamber will wait for a final ruling on the quo warranto case, as Sereno is still expected to appeal.
Davide earlier said Calida’s questioning of the validity of Sereno’s appointment as chief justice was filed “out of time”—that it should have happened within a year of her appointment.
When the quit calls came, he appealed to judges and court employees not to join the “political fray.”
Sereno is the second chief justice to be ousted, the first being Renato Corona, who was impeached in 2012 for failure to fully disclose his wealth.
Prior to the High Court’s decision against Sereno, Duterte in April announced that the female head magistrate was now his “enemy” for accusing him of being behind the filing of the quo warranto case against her.
The president instructed his allies in the House to hasten Sereno’s ouster, saying she is not deserving to serve the top post in the Supreme Court as she is “bad for the Philippines.”
But Duterte on Wednesday vowed to resign if it would be proven that he had a hand in the ouster of Sereno.
“I said if there’s one congresswoman or congressman or justice, a single justice who will say I talked to them, I can guarantee you, I will resign,” he told reporters.
“I told Sereno I was not involved in it…Ask anyone. I never lifted a finger,” the president said.
Malacanang has denied any role in the ouster of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.
