Friday, May 18, 2018

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE 14 SENATORS WHO WROTE TO THE SC TO REVIEW ITS DECISION IN OUSTING MA. LOURDES SERENO AS CHIEF JUSTICE


With due respect gentlemen and ladies, you terribly missed the point.
You missed it because had you read the decision right of the Supreme Court justices, your letter is not needed because the legal issue at hand was a petition for Quo Warranto and not Impeachment.
The former points to the lawfullness of Sereno's assumption as Chief Justice while the latter was about one of the modes of how a Chief Justice can be remove.
Let us not roam around the bush, central to the issue is quo warranto which according to the 1987 constitution that you are also invoking as your basis in "respectfully" urging the SC to review its decision to nullify the appointment of Sereno is vested on the highest court to, "exercise original jurisdiction" (ARTICLE VIII SEC. 5 (1)," over petition of quo warranto.
It is quo warranto, to repeat, and as such, your letter to the SC is off tangent, if not necessarily misplaced because it is not an impeachment where congress could only act.
Your colleague Senator Panfilo Lacson is right, your action is "premature" and if I may add, you somehow has "disrespected" the SC justices because your letter while stating that you are "respectfully urging" is tantamount to telling them to reconsider their decision. It is sort of sarcasm to say the least because the letter is a seeming insult to their "collective intelligence" as if telling them that they were wrong in their decision to oust Sereno.
Again had it been an impeachment, that will be within your ambit and jurisdiction but no sirs and madames, it is about quo warranto.
Mayroon sa inyo lawyers, abugado, pero mabuti pa yata ang non-lawyers eh, nakakaintindi, eh kayo ata, medyo simplang.
To my mind, being a non-lawyer, the issue is not even about constitutional provision or whatnot, it is just about understanding basic English and grammar.
It is about simply the adverb "maybe" added to "removed in office," so that means, "possibly but not certainly."
Ergo, impeachment therefore, as means to oust an impeachable official like a Chief Justice is not absolute.
To that let's read together, salient part of Section 2, Article XI, "The President, the Vice President, the Members of the Supreme Court, the Members of the Constitutional Commissions, and the Ombudsman may be removed from office on impeachment for, xxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx."
Did you get it, may be did not? If in case you did not, then perhaps if not may be too, you got the wrong advisers or probably somebody was absent when their English teacher used the word maybe/may be in a sentence, thereby explaining the meaning of that wonderful adverb.
That being said, it is unfortunate that while you invoke co-equal branch of goverment and its separation of powers thereof but your letter to the SC itself is intrusion to their independence.
And whom you are vouching? An impostor or illegal occupant? Just asking.

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