(Eagle News)–The Coalition for Justice (CFJ) is urging the Supreme Court en banc to order its five supposedly biased members to inhibit from the quo warranto case against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.
The CFJ said Justices Teresita de Castro, Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Francis Jardeleza, and Noel Tijam should be told to inhibit if they refuse to inhibit themselves “to preserve (the SC’s) credibility as an institution mandated to dispense justice.”
“To allow its members to brazenly flout their own rules is to destroy its moral ascendancy. After all, who will respect a High Tribunal that does not honor its own Code,” the CFJ said.
In urging the SC, the group said the five justices showed “clear bias and hostility” towards Sereno .
It said proof of this was their approval of a resolution that required her to appear before oral arguments on April 10, a resolution it said “reeked of hostility and bias tantamount to a gross injustice.”
Sereno, after all, it said, “has consistently asserted that the power to remove impeachable officers lies only with Congress.”
“On this basis she, as well as all the intervenors against the petition, have questioned the SC’s jurisdiction to hear the petition,” the CFJ said.
The CFJ added Tijam was also the ponente of the resolution which the SC en banc has already amended.
The CFJ said the Code of Judicial Conduct states that:
“Impartiality is essential to the proper discharge of the judicial office. It applies not only to the decision itself but also to the process by which the decision is made.
SECTION 1. Judges shall perform their judicial duties without favor, bias or prejudice.
SECTION 5. Judges shall disqualify themselves from participating in any proceedings in which they are unable to decide the matter impartially or in which it may appear to a reasonable observer that they are unable to decide the matter impartially. Such proceedings include, but are not limited to instances where:
(a) The judge has actual bias or prejudice concerning a party or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceedings;”
“We appeal to the Supreme Court en banc to be faithful to your mandate. The CFJ and the Filipino people await your action. By it we will see whether the Supreme Court is indeed devoted to the rule of law, or whether, – as many have begun to suspect – it is resolutely committed to the rule of one,” it said.
Earlier, Sereno herself also sought the inhibition of the five justices.