FRONTLINE
By Ninez
Cacho-Olivares
So
who says Noynoy’s Chief Justice, Lourdes Sereno, is independent of
the Malacañang tenant along with her claims of being an impartial
chief justice?
Her latest move, that of her issuing, on her own, a
temporary restraining order (TRO), without this being confirmed by,
at the very least, the majority of the associate justices, while
stopping the Commission on Elections (Comelec) en banc from unseating
Imus Cavite Mayor Emmanuel Maliksi, is proof positive that she jumps
when her master in Malacañang orders her to do so.
In the Comelec
en banc, with a vote of 4 to 2, Maliksi was unseated by Chairman
Sixto Brillantes, Elias Yusoph, Rene Sarmiento and Armando Velasco
due to alleged election fraud.
Commissioners Lucenito Tagle and
Christian Robert Lim did not take part.
Maliksi, as most
Philippine political observers know, is aligned with Noynoy and his
Liberal Party (LP). As a matter of record, some weeks back, Noynoy,
in a mass LP swearing in of recruits in Cavite, enthusiastically
endorsed Ireno Maliksi for the gubernatorial post in that province.
The Maliksis are identified with Noynoy and the LP.
It is also of
record that Sereno, as an associate justice virtually screamed at
then Chief Justice (CJ) Renato Corona and the associate justices who
voted along with him for issuing a TRO against the Department of
Justice (DoJ) on its hold departure order (HDO) against Gloria Arroyo
and her spouse, Mike, insisting that a TRO should not be issued
immediately, and that matters should first be deliberated by the
justices, then even going further by disclosing, in her dissenting
opinion, the details of what can be termed as private and
confidential deliberations — clearly for the use of Noynoy and his
attack dog, Justice Chief Leila de Lima, to destroy Corona.
Yet
now, she, on her own, and without even giving her associate justices,
especially senior associate justice Antonio Carpio, the courtesy of
discussing the issuance of a TRO, does that to which she herself had
objected, when she was a junior associate justice. And to think that
the TRO against the DoJ in the case of the HDO on Gloria was not the
sole action of Corona but the action of the majority of justices in
the Supreme Court (SC).
Also, in the case of the petitions for a
stoppage of the Cybercrime law from being enforced, she also
reportedly refused to issue a TRO on the 15 cases involving the same
case, claiming that there was a lack of justices to decide whether to
grant a TRO. Yet she issues a TRO on her own?
In this case of
Maliksi, she moved fast and alone, issuing a TRO on her own.
How
then can she explain this turnaround?
There can only be one
reason: Noynoy and the LP leaders wanted the Comelec order to unseat
the Imus mayor, Emmanuel Maliksi, stopped by the high court, and as
she could not get the justices to go along with her, she issued the
TRO on her own — as ordered by the Malacañang tenant.
Independent
and impartial, Sereno claims she is?
Under the rules of SC,
Sereno, as chief justice, does have the authority to issue a TRO on
her own but it should also be confirmed by the SC en ban on its next
regular meeting.
But if that TRO was so important to be issued,
why then did not Sereno bring this up last Tuesday when the high
court had a TRO? Why claim that not all the justices were around?
The
answer probably is that she wouldn’t have gotten the numbers from
the justices to issue that TRO.
Also, in the Maliksi case, this
issue went into a regular en banc session but Sereno opted to issue
the TRO solely and even without the recommendation from the ponente,
Justice Carpio.
The Maliksi case had already been assigned to
Carpio.
Carpio who was assigned to make a draft decision on the
case did not make any recommendation for a TRO. However on Oct.11,
the Tribune report said, Sereno issued a TRO on her own against the
Comelec and in favor of Maliksi, effective immediately.
There can
hardly be any doubt that Sereno has become the judicial puppy dog of
Noynoy given her inexplicable solo move. And that, dear Watson, is
the reason Noynoy appointed her to the top SC post. Elementary,
really.
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