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Deputy Supreme Court Justice Mario Victor F. Leonen (Photo by South Carolina Office of Public Information)
MANILA, Philippines – The House of Representatives will insist on its exclusive jurisdiction over the impeachment case against Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (SC), Marvic Leonen, and will not allow a repeat of what happened to the former President of the Court Supreme Maria Lourdes Sereno, said a legislator. Thursday.
Sereno was indicted through a quo warranto petition on May 11, 2018 for proven lack of integrity for failing to file her Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) disclosures when she was a law professor at the University of the Philippines.
“I believe that the Supreme Court will not make the same mistake of having quo warranto against the prosecuted officials because according to the constitution only the House will accuse him and only the Senate will remove him. I was not a member of the House in the impeachment of Sereno, but I believe that the impeachment process should be carried out exclusively by the House of Representatives, ”said House Vice President Rufus Rodríguez in an interview on the news channel ABS-CBN.
“So that’s my position. That will be my position now that I sit on the committee that the constitution only provides a mechanism that the court rules en quo guarantee. Only the constitutional hearing in the House of Representatives and the Senate, ”he added.
Representative of Cagayán de Oro Rufus Rodríguez (Image from his Facebook page)
“Thus, [House] ensure that we will insist on the committee that we will have exclusive jurisdiction, in this particular case [ouster complaint against Leonen]It will not happen with what happened to the former president of the Sereno Supreme Court ”, he added.
Sereno was the only constitutional official removed from office without an impeachment process in Congress.
Ousted Philippine Supreme Court President Maria Lourdes Sereno listens to a question from the media during a press conference following her impeachment by the Supreme Court on Friday May 11, 2018 in Manila, Philippines. The Philippine Supreme Court ousted its chief justice, a critic of the country’s authoritarian president, in an unprecedented vote on Friday by other justices that she and hundreds of protesters called unconstitutional and a threat to democracy. (AP Photo / Bullit Márquez)
Leonen is currently facing an impeachment complaint filed by Edwin Cordevilla, secretary general of the Philippine League of Good Government Defenders, who was assisted by attorney Larry Gadon, who also filed an impeachment complaint against Sereno in 2017.
The complaint against Leonen was supported by the deputy of the 2nd District of Ilocos Norte Angelo Marcos Barba.
The author claimed that Leonen “clearly lacks integrity because he did not submit his SALN.”
He cited a newspaper column that accused Leonen of not presenting the SALN for 15 years.
The complainant added that Leonen has also been “negligent and incompetent” for allegedly failing to resolve 37 cases in the Supreme Court in violation of the constitutional mandate that cases must be resolved within 24 months from the time they are submitted for resolution.
Rodriguez, vice chair of the House of Representatives justice panel, previously said that the impeachment process against Leonen will begin in 2021.
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