‘Shameless, shameful drama’

“Look who’s talking?” Mr. Raul Palabrica wrote about the Supreme Court lecturing lower courts to encourage amicable settlement among litigants, in light of the open bickering between Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo de Castro and Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno who are the main protagonists in the catfight (“Black marks on the law profession,” 4/20/18).

The other justices of the high court did not seem to mind their childish display of tantrums and total lack of decorum. Some of them (Sereno haters themselves) were surely gloating over the foregone conclusion in the quo warranto petition against her.

But more than stressing the perjury committed by lawyer Larry Gadon who lied under oath about having “personal knowledge” of his impeachment charges against Sereno that turned out to be all “hearsay,” the title should have been “Black mark on the Supreme Court.”

Gadon’s malpractice is just a subplot in the shameless, shameful drama being staged at the “Mount Olympus” annex (in Baguio City) by “gods” who “have feet of clay” and are just as despicable as any mortal can be.

This black mark on the entire justice system is more alarming than the dime-a-dozen spectacle of a lawyer who sold his law practice.

Look who’s talking? That’s what lower court magistrates have been whispering for decades about the Supreme Court’s constant reminder for them to speed up the disposition of cases or face administrative sanctions.

They are always told to their faces that it’s a mandatory constitutional duty they can only shirk at the risk of being dismissed from the judiciary.

If only they could talk back: Your honors, dismiss yourselves
already! The sheer hypocrisy just kills them.

MARIA MARGARITA AYTONA, marimar_ay@yahoo.com