MANILA – The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) on Friday filed a motion for reconsideration against the Supreme Court decision nullifying the appointment of Maria Lourdes Sereno as chief justice.
The SC ruling on Sereno’s ouster was “narrowly drawn,” IBP national president Atty. Abdiel Dan Fajardo said.
“It shows the use of the law to pursue a desired result, that is, the ouster of the chief justice. This erodes, if not demolishes, the rule of law by which all members of the Bar have sworn as a condition to admission,” Fajardo added.
On May 11, the Supreme Court, voting 8-6, granted Solicitor General Jose C. Calida’s quo warranto petition to remove Sereno from office.
The IBP insisted that impeachment is the constitutional process by which a chief justice could be removed.
“No considerations of politics or animosity justify the refusal to recognize the constitutionally designed mechanism of impeachment and the doctrine of judicial restraint which are clearly proper,” statement from the country’s mandatory organization of lawyers said.
It added, “The rule of law cannot survive in a legal system where the law changes like sand dunes at the whim of desert winds. As universally recognized, the law is a set of open, general and relatively stable laws. The stability of the system of laws is what draws the line between a rule of law and rule of men.”
On May 30, Sereno filed a 205-page motion for reconsideration, saying that the high court has no jurisdiction over the quo warranto petition and that she can only be removed through impeachment./PN
