(Eagle News) — The House committee on justice on Wednesday dismissed the impeachment complaint filed by the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption and the Vanguard of the Philippine Constitution Inc. against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.
Voting 28-5, the panel said the complaint filed by VACC founding chair Dante Jimenez and Vanguard president Eligio Mallari was “insufficient in form” for making use of a verification form that was not intended for complaints filed by private individuals.
The complaint–which accused Sereno of culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust when she supposedly sat on applications for two posts of assistant court administrator, and the posts of Supreme Court deputy clerk of court and chief attorney; charged allowances of her staff traveling abroad against Supreme Court funds without the go-signal of the en banc; and reopened the Regional Court Administration Office in Western Visayas and created a new Judiciary Decentralized Office without approval from the en banc—used a verification form intended for complaints endorsed by one third of the House of Representatives.
The dismissal of the VACC-Vanguard complaint came after 30 lawmakers voted for lawyer Larry Gadon’s impeachment complaint against Sereno to move forward, after they found it sufficient in both form and substance.