(Eagle News) — The camp of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno said on Monday that they were expecting her detractors to “intensify their smear campaign against her.”
Lawyer Jojo Lacanilao, one of Sereno’s spokespersons, said this was “to cover up for the fatally defective impeachment case.”
“It is our position that if there is a strong case against the Chief Justice, it should have long been elevated to the Senate for trial,” he said.
He said that “not even the testimonies of the justices, which pertain to differences in opinion with respect to internal processes of the Supreme Court, were enough to prove that the Chief Justice committed an impeachable offense that would warrant her removal from office.”
He said that the report about the 10 justices testifying in the hearing were just “part and parcel of a propaganda designed to project that Chief Justice does not enjoy the support of her colleagues in the Supreme Court, which is actually not the case.”
Associate Justices Francis Jardeleza, Teresita Leonardo De Castro, Noel Tijam, and retired SC justice Arturo Brion have already testified before the justice committee.
Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, and Associate Justices Samuel Martires and Mariano del Castillo are slated to do the same in subsequent hearings slated to resume this month.
“Given the possible nature of their testimonies, it is unfair to conclude that the justices who are invited to the coming hearings are testifying against the Chief Justice,” Lacanilao said.
According to Lacanilao, it was also not true that Sereno did not accept the House justice committee’s invitation to attend hearings, as Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez claimed.
“We have to remember that the Chief Justice accepted the invitation of the committee to attend the hearings through her counsel, which is her right under their own rules and the Constitution, but the committee did not allow her to be represented by her counsels of choice and to cross examine the complainant and the witnesses through her lawyers,” Lacanilao said.