Sereno in go-for-broke interview: 'If I leave, that would make things worse'

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HELL hath no fury like a woman justice scorned.

Chief Justice on-leave Maria Lourdes Sereno, now facing the eve of a potential verdict by her colleagues on a petition to unseat her, is going for broke as the woman who believes she's been wronged fights back.

In an interview with ABS-CBN News, the youngest of the 15-person Supreme Court minced no word addressing her critics head on, calling them “biased and unforgiving,” and at point saying they were “short-sighted” for accommodating the quo warranto case against her which she thinks may take the country to “dangerous” grounds.

No safe place

“There is no safe place in this country if all public officials can be threatened with dismissal for doing what they are supposed to do,” she said, hardly had she settled down for the interview last Friday.

“When they don’t like the decision of a judge, when they don’t like the report of an auditor, they would want to kick them out. They are doing this to me. That quo warranto petition—they tasted a powerful tool of intimidation,” she added.

But Sereno said she refused to look like she’s someone who can easily be intimidated by forces that are more powerful than the office of the Supreme Court, supposedly the weakest among the three branches of the government.

“My counsels are very conservative, mindful of the court rules,” she said in what she called a “go-for-broke” interview, prompting an aide to say that she was getting bolder.

Forced to speak up

“And I have tried very hard to keep our internal disagreement and dissension among ourselves, but they went to town with it, I am now forced to speak up.”

Sereno claimed some of her colleagues at the tribunal are still nursing bruised egos over her selection as chief magistrate in August 2012. They are expected to publicize their decision on the quo warranto petition on May 11, six days ahead of initial target date.

“Why the haste?” she asked.

• READ: SC magistrates to vote on Sereno ouster on May 11 - source

Still no case

But no, Sereno added, “some justices” disparaged her long ago at the House of Representatives, which is hearing the impeachment case filed by lawyer Lorenzo Gadon.

“Until now, many hearings later, they (members of the House committee on justice) still have no case,” she said. And they knew it, she added. “They couldn’t find anything.”

Looking back, Sereno theorized that the impeachment complaint filed by Gadon in October 2017 and the quo warranto petition by Solicitor General Jose Calida last March were “choreographed, synchronized, and organized”.

The plot was hatched, she added, shortly after her appointment in August 2012 by people from the three branches of government, including the Office of the President, who had motives “other than noble." She recalled the displeasure of President Duterte when she talked about the dangers of martial law, at the Ateneo de Manila University, a few days after he placed the entire Mindanao under martial law in May 2017.

• READ: Gadon wants SC to invalidate Sereno's appointment

First among equals

She said her colleagues at the High Court had found it discombobulating when she, then the newly appointed associate justice, would go against the majority decision frequently, and would do so strongly.

“Some of the justices were 14 years ahead of me,” she said. She noted, however, that two chief justices from the US and Singapore also presided over older members of the court.

But she believes that the friction among them started when she was appointed first among equals. “Of course, but even as an associate justice, they seem to see me strongly dissenting (against other) justices (on) political issues; so strong is my independence.”

One older colleague admonished her for applying for the top post. “She said, 'I am No. 12, how could you be No. 1?' She told me: 'I will not forgive you for accepting the position. You should not have even applied for it,’” she said.

On her first day as chief justice, Sereno said she tried to win her older colleagues back.

Young and old people

“I asked for (their) cooperation,” she said. “I tried to interact with everyone well to fix the crack in our relationships. But I could not afford to fix or mend all the cracks all by myself. Two people who have problems, you two will provide the capital to fix the relationship.”

In the end, she said, she also found it discombobulating that it wasn’t easy to fix the gap among them. All of them, though years apart, belong to the generation of baby boomers, not of the rambunctious millennials. It is not easy to wake up people feigning sleep, she said.

Better judgment

Yet, through it all, Sereno said she doesn't believe that on the night before May 11, in case the tribunal rules on the quo warranto case, that it would be a night of a hundred knives, that all justices would come out wanting her out the following day. Because, she said, she still believes that their differences wouldn’t go against their better judgment.

“We do not know as of now who are in the majority and who are the minority here,” she said. “We do not know how they will vote yet. There is relative quiet. There is only one sector that makes noise.”

No Plan B

She reiterated she is willing to face the Senate as an impeachment court and accept a final verdict against her. “Yes, I am going there and yes, I have repeatedly said, I am willing to step down if there is a judgment of conviction. But I am confident they will not be able to see that there is any impeachable offense.”

Sereno said she is not thinking of other options, when asked what she plans to do in case she is ousted by her peers.

“I do not think of leaving the court before the impeachment,” she said. “I couldn’t say I am now facing an end-game. But this is dangerous. Why? Kasi unprecedented ito.”

She said questions about her appointment should have been raised within a year of her appointment, not after five years. “Never happened in the history of the Philippines that a remedy in the Rules of Court with the prescriptive period was missed to take effect five and a half years after I assumed office as Chief Justice."

Missing SALN

The House justice committee unearthed during the hearing that Sereno had seven missing Statements of Assets and Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN), which became Calida’s basis for asking the court to nullify her appointment.

Calling them biased, Sereno has asked six of her colleagues in the High Court (the last one was Associate Justice Samuel Martires last Friday) to inhibit from the quo warranto proceedings that might result in her ouster from the the court. The first five had dismissed her calls, saying these were without basis.

Politics, justice shouldn’t mix

She also asked her eight other colleagues to resolve in a full-court session these petitions before deciding on the quo warranto case.

“It is well-settled principle that a judge should not only be impartial, he must also appear impartial; for appearance is an essential manifestation of reality. Like Caesar’s wife, a judge must not only be pure but beyond suspicion,” she said.

She wants the eight other justices to insulate the court from politics.

Right CJ, wrong time?

She dismissed suggestions that she could have been the right chief justice at the wrong time.

“I think I am the right justice at the right time,” she said. “We now live in a climate of fear. People holding to the truth, that is what you need today. Those who can afford to stand on faith. Because what does it mean to have checks and balances?”

Not an issue?

But where are the missing copies of her Statement of Assets and Liabilities and Net Worth (SALNs), the sum and substance of the quo warranto proceedings?

“Actually, it is a non-issue,” she said, stressing that her case and that of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona are different.

“I am not accused of any...[of] illegally acquiring wealth,” she said. “He [Corona] did not declare in his SALN his foreign currencies. In my case, I declared everything, except that some of my SALN have been missing.”

As of Friday, Sereno said only four of the seven SALN copies were still missing.

Youth vs Wisdom

Told that when she was much younger, she was probably “burara” or untidy, she laughed.

Youth is wasted in the young? But is wisdom wasted in the old? How else explained that her critics at the High Court have been ignoring that age-old maxim that one’s accuser can’t be one’s judge which, she said, is an inviolable principle in law to ensure impartiality in handling a case?

“What lessons then are we teaching our lawyers, especially the young barristers? We are the justices of the Supreme Court. My prosecutors can’t be my judge,” she said.

“Very basic 'yan. You do not even need to study law to determine the basic requirement of fairness in life. In other words, very essential element of justice that is accusing you, cannot be the judge. What lessons are we telling them that we will deny someone who can only be removed through an impeachment trial the right to heard?"

Walking wounded

By now, Sereno said she might be walking wounded as a result of the impeachment complaint and quo warranto petition filed against her.

“I am, but the question is, what is the wound. I am not easily provoked. But I get mad when I see others being bullied.”

All the brouhaha, she said, is not about her.

“My hope is that Filipinos can engage in a national conversation on what justice means. Ultimately, what is at stake here is the right of every person to be able to defend himself.”

“As I said, there is no safe place in this country if all public officials can be threatened with quo warranto beginning with the chief justice. Even if I leave, that wouldn’t make things right, that would make things worse. Delikado.”