By Jefferson Antiporda
JUSTICE Secretary Leila de Lima has admitted that the temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the Supreme Court against her department’s implementation of the watch list order (WLO) against former President and now Rep. Gloria Arroyo of Pampanga province could not be issued by Chief Justice Renato Corona alone.
During Wednesday’s impeachment proceedings, the House prosecution panel presented de Lima to testify in connection with Article VII of the Articles of Impeachment.
This article accuses Corona of betraying public trust “through his partiality in granting a temporary restraining order in favor of former President Gloria Arroyo and her husband Jose Miguel Arroyo in order to give them an opportunity to escape prosecution and to frustrate the ends of justice, and in distorting the Supreme Court decision on the effectivity of the TRO in view of a clear failure to comply with the conditions of the Supreme Court’s own TRO.”
“Yes, there has been no resolution or order coming from the Supreme Court [that] was issued alone by the respondent Chief Justice Corona,” de Lima replied after Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile asked her if there were instances when the chief magistrate acted alone in issuing orders of the High Tribunal.
The Justice chief, however, said that there were actions on Corona’s part that could have influenced or led to the issuance of the restraining order to help the Arroyos escape criminal liability.
During her testimony, de Lima cited the dissenting opinion of Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno regarding the supposed instruction of Corona to Presbiterio Velasco to not promulgate the High Court magistrate’s dissenting opinion on December 2 that showed the Chief Justice’s influence on the other justices.
She said that although Corona couldn’t issue High Tribunal decisions and orders without the vote of the majority of the justices, he as chief magistrate might have some influence and power over them.
De Lima’s testimony is generally a narration of the facts that transpired last year when the High Court issued the restraining order lifting the Justice department’s WLO, which would allow the former president to leave the country and seek medical treatment.
The Justice secretary, despite the restraining order, prevented the former leader and her entourage from leaving the country because she said that her department had not yet received the copy of the TRO and that the Arroyo camp had not yet complied by the condition imposed by the High Court regarding that directive.
According to her, the High Tribunal imposed three conditions on its TRO that the petitioners must comply with first before the Justice department could comply with the order.
De Lima admitted that she might still refuse to allow the former leader to leave, even if her department managed to receive the copy of the order and the petitioners complied with the condition because she said the Supreme Court order was improper.
The Justice chief said that based on the information she had gathered and the dissenting opinions of other High Court justices, she believed that it was only proper for her department to take action through the motion of reconsideration.
Enrile then asked de Lima if her stand would be different in the absence of outside information drawn from the dissenting opinion of Sereno, but the Justice secretary replied that she was not at all privy to information aside from those circumstances that was reflected in that opinion.
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