Divine right to judge

Last week, we joined the call to give Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno a chance to prove—or enough rope to hang—herself. In less than two weeks since her elevation to the loftiest post in the judiciary, her reputation has unraveled from a hanging by her own hands.

Since her appointment, she has run into a blizzard of controversy over her actions and pronouncements to push reforms in the Supreme Court in order to prove (1) that she is worthy of the accolades heaped on her by her patron, the Aquino administration, and (2) that the Supreme Court under her leadership is a sharp contrast to the reviled institution then led by the dismissed Chief Justice Renato Corona.

At her oath-taking on National Heroes Day, President Aquino exhorted his protégé: “I expect that you will weigh your judgment and decision so the people’s trust in the institution you’re heading will be restored. The people’s mandate to you is: Let the fair system of justice prevail. It should  be impartial to the rich or poor, or ordinary Filipinos or the powerful.”

It’s true that Filipinos expect a fair administration of justice in this changing of the guard from the a much-maligned corrupt regime to one that proclaims itself as the embodiment of unsullied rectitude in governance and as God’s gift to the Filipino people. But this exhortation to Sereno had a hypocritical ring  because it was made by a scion of one of the wealthiest landlord families in the country; it was addressed to someone who, as associate justice of the high court appointed two years ago, wrote a dissenting opinion putting the value of just compensation for Hacienda Luisita, which is owned by the President’s kin, at 2006 valuation (P2.5 million per hectare), and not at the 1989 fair market value (P40,000 per hectare).

This dialogue on National Heroes Day highlighted the parody of an unequal relationship between the President and the head of a supposedly independent branch of government. It does not inspire the Filipino people’s trust in the ability of Sereno to make the high court independent from the executive branch and to render justice to all Filipinos, rich or poor.

Sereno brought with her to the Supreme Court a lot of heavy baggage that now casts doubt on her ability to assert the tribunal’s independence. What we are witnessing is a friendly and more cozy relationship between the administration and the Sereno court, not the the fierce and disruptive antagonism between the Corona court and the administration. These ostensibly amicable relations between the administration and the high court are deceptive and hardly mask the fact that the President is more interested in subordinating the tribunal than in restoring public trust in it.

The appointment of Sereno, who jumped over five senior justices, has left a festering unrest in the high court among the bypassed justices. She sits on the lid of a seething mutiny that can only hamper whatever internal administrative reforms she plans to undertake (chief among which is declogging the court dockets and speeding up litigation  process). The resentment is so deep that seven justices boycotted her first flag-raising ceremony at the Supreme Court. In her oath-taking at Malacañang, only five justices were present; Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, who is seen as the leader of the five bypassed senior justices, didn’t show up. These boycotts have sent strong signals to the President that Sereno has serious problems in organizing a unified court, and announced the emergence of a  hard core of justices who would resist moves to subordinate the tribunal and block his social and political reforms that may be brought to it.

For all the ample academic credentials listed in her lengthy curriculum vitae, Sereno’s dossier of her 25 years as a lawyer shows that her practice and experience were mostly spent on the periphery of the judiciary system, without any service in the courts, raising doubts about her knowledge of law. On her first day in office, she turned down media interviews, saying she wanted the high court to return to its “golden days of dignified silence,” when the justices were heard only “through the decisions they write.”

The following day, she gave a speech at the Conference of Presidents of Law Associations in Asia, where she appealed to the public to “give the judiciary room or undertake the process of reflection and to allow the Chief Justice to lead that process.” This led the media to try to decipher what these words really meant. Then came the pièce de résistance. Questions on her psychological and emotional stability and balance were raised after a newspaper (not the Inquirer) reported on the results of a psychiatric test administered by the Judicial and Bar Council on Sereno during its interviews with nominees for chief justice. The test results allegedly showed her to be “dramatic and emotional. She appears energetic and all smiles and agreeable, but with religious preoccupation in almost all significant aspects of her life. She projects a happy mood but has depressive markers too. There is a strong tendency to make decisions based on current mood, thus outcome is highly subjective and self-righteous.”

According to my colleague Rigoberto Tiglao (who wrote on the test results), the JBC has not denied the report. And he pointed out that Sereno said at the flag ceremony that “the whole world is witness that my appointment as Chief Justice is God’s will. No one person did this, much less any political bloc.”

No need for comment. Her words speak for themselves.