(Eagle News) — A mere “scrap of paper.”
This was how the camp of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno described the petition filed by a suspended lawyer urging the Solicitor General to challenge the top magistrate’s appointment.
“We cannot help but view this latest ignorant attempt as part and parcel of the grand plan to harass, malign and humiliate the Chief Justice to force her to resign,” Sereno’s spokesperson Josa Deinla said in a statement after Eligio Mallari filed the request to initiate quo warranto proceedings against the SC chief justice.
According to Deinla, Mallari’s move was because Sereno’s “detractors know that the impeachment complaint lodged against her is baseless and contains allegations which are not even grounds for impeachment.”
In the first place, Deinla said the Chief Justice, “being the 5th highest official of the land, can only be removed through an impeachment proceeding, and not through a quo warranto proceeding.”
Mallari, who has been suspended for two years after the SC found he resorted to “dilatory tactics” in courts to avoid forfeiture of his properties, filed the petition against the Chief Justice on Wednesday.
In his two-page letter, Mallari said Sereno’s supposed failing mark in a psychological exam prior to her appointment at the helm of the SC in 2012, among others, were sufficient reasons for the initiation of quo warranto proceedings against her.
The House justice panel is holding hearings to determine whether there was probable cause for the impeachment complaint filed by lawyer Larry Gadon against Sereno.