By Moira Encina
Eagle News Service
(Eagle News) — Supreme Court Chief Justice-on leave Maria Lourdes Sereno is asking four of the tribunal’s justices to “inhibit” from the quo warranto petition filed against her by the Office of the Solicitor General.
Sereno filed a motion for inhibition against Associate Justices Noel Tijam, Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin and Francis Jardeleza.
Justice Tijam was the justice assigned to write whatever will be the decision on the quo warranto petition against Sereno.
The four SC justices had earlier appeared before the House Justice committee hearing the impeachment complaint against Sereno filed by lawyer Larry Gadon.
Sereno accused the four justices of being “biased” against her.
In a press statement, the controversial chief justice said “her constitutional right to due process would be violated if the justices who publicly criticized her in the impeachment hearings and supported calls for her resignation are allowed to participate in the deliberation of the quo warranto case.”
She claimed that all four justices “cannot decide the quo warranto petition objectively and impartially.”
“Due process of law requires a hearing before an impartial and disinterested tribunal, and that every litigant is entitled to nothing less than the cold neutrality of an impartial judge,” Sereno said, citing Article III, Section 1 of the 1987 Constitution,” she said.
Sereno said that Tijam, Peralta, Bersamin and Jardeleza exhibited “actual bias” against her.
She noted that Peralta testified before the House Committee on Justice that she should have been disqualified for the top judicial post in 2012 due to her failure to submit to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) her Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth for the years that she was employed as professor at the University of the Philippines.
Peralta was the acting ex-officio chair of the JBC when Sereno was nominated for appointment as chief justice nearly six years ago.
“Peralta’s apparent bias emanated from his belief that it was her who caused the exclusion of his wife, Court of Appeals Associate Justice Fernanda Lampas Peralta, from the list of applicants for presiding justice of the appellate court last year. Peralta himself admitted this in at least two House impeachment hearings he attended,” a press statement released by the Sereno camp said.
“The Chief Justice has good reason to believe that he (Peralta) may have prejudged the merits of the quo warranto petition and that he may already have formed an opinion that the Chief Justice should have been disqualified to be nominated as Chief Justice,” Sereno said in her 14-page motion seeking Peralta’s inhibition.
She said Peralta should inhibit himself from the case “because as then acting ex-officio chair of the JBC he would have personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the quo warranto proceeding” and that he “served as a material witness in the matter in controversy.”
Sereno said that there is also “reasonable basis to conclude from Justice Jardeleza’s testimony that he harbored ill feelings” her “as a consequence of the latter’s challenge to his integrity during the nomination process for the Associate Justice position (vice Hon. Justice Roberto A. Abad) in 2014.”
During the impeachment hearings, she noted that Jardeleza accused her of committing treason and characterized her actions in the nomination process as “inhumane” and “not of a normal person.”
The two other justices whom Sereno wanted to inhibit from participating in the case are Tijam and Bersamin who also testified against her during the hearings on the impeachment complaint before the House Justice Committee.
Sereno claimed a newspaper article had quoted Tijam as saying that “If Chief Justice Sereno continues to ignore and continues to refuse to participate in the impeachment process, ergo, she is clearly liable for culpable violation of the Constitution.”
She said this meant that Tijam had already formed an opinion on the quo warranto case.
She said that Bersamin also “exhibited bias and animosity” towards her during his testimony during the same impeachment hearings.
“He (Bersamin) alluded to the Chief Justice as a ‘dictator’ as he expressed his personal resentment over her manner of leadership which, according to him, was against the collegial nature of the SC,” said a statement released by the Sereno camp.
Sereno, who had been making several public pronouncements and press statement since she went on leave on March 1, had confirmed that she would be attending the oral arguments on the case set by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, April 10 in Baguio City.
“Yes, I will attend. Ako naman consistent,” Sereno told reporters after a provincial speaking engagement.
The high court had earlier instructed Sereno to “personally appear” in the oral arguments on the quo warranto petition scheduled on Tuesday, April 10, so she could “answer questions from the Court En Banc.”
The hearing was set after the high court granted Sereno’s “Ad Cautelam Motion to Set for Oral Argument” the quo warranto petition filed by the Office of the Solicitor General.
This would be the first time that a Chief Justice will be attending a hearing on a case involving the position that would be decided by her fellow justices.
