(Eagle News) – Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno lectured on the importance of democracy and rule of law, a day before the House Justice committee was slated to vote on whether there was probable cause for the impeachment complaint filed against her.
Speaking in a forum at St. Scholastica’s College in Manila on Wednesday, March 7, the embattled Chief Justice said “the current state of the nation is one where perceived enemies of the dominant order is considered fair game for harassment, intimidation, and persecution.”
She also said the country was at a state “where shortcuts are preferred over adherence to constitutional guarantees of human rights, including the denial of due process.”
The Chief Justice also said that the “poor” and “unknowing” Filipinos were the victims in what she said was an “erosion of bill of rights.”
Quoting from the preamble of the Constitution, she emphasized that the nation’s goal was “to build a just and humane” society.
She also stressed that the “government has the positive duty to embody the highest level of nobility, good , wisdom, and righteousness,” and should lead the nation in upholding justice, equality, love, “freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, and freedom of expression, and not hatred, divisiveness, and strife.
“It is what the Constitution requires of us as a nation. So that anything that diminishes society’s humanity and justice, unjustness is anti-constitution and anti-Filipino,” she added.
According to Sereno, the Filipino people must act and be thoroughly convinced that the current situation of the nation–where she said “fake news and propaganda abound to deceive and manipulate rather than enlighten and educate, and where coarseness including the denigration of women rather than civility”— could still be changed.
“We must not be passive spectators to what is happening, thinking that it is but a game of thrones among political forces with little connection to the lives of majority of the Filipinos,” she stressed.
Sereno’s message also came a day after the Supreme Court en banc gave her 10 days to submit her comment on the “quo warranto” petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida that sought to void her appointment as Chief Justice.
Sereno’s camp has reiterated that she can only be removed from office through impeachment under the Constitution.
