Factual response to Tiglao column

Rigoberto Tiglao’s Aug. 30 column, “Sereno lied on her track record,” is remarkable in its hostility to and complete unfamiliarity with the persona and career of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes A. Sereno. Many of the unfortunate statements in that column do require some factual response.

Sereno graduated in 1984 cum laude and valedictorian of her class in the UP College of Law. It is widely known that of the cases she handled, at least two are truly worthy of mention as their significance for the entire country is real enough.

We refer firstly to the Naia III international arbitration cases which are widely known, and do not need extensive exposition here. The other case involved the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), establishing the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity in Mindanao. There Sereno stood up before the Supreme Court and argued robustly and persuasively that the MOA-AD needed to be set aside for urgent, legal and fundamental reasons. The MOA-AD would have put our country asunder, a situation that apparently was not fully understood by our government negotiators. The MOA-AD could not be squared with the fundamental survival of the Republic of the Philippines.

Tiglao uses a number of unfortunate and undeserved adjectives in seeking to describe the academic career of the Chief Justice: “obscure law professor,” “lackluster academic” and “a writer of unremarkable papers.” Tiglao should have spent a little more time in examining the academic articles and statements written by Sereno. She was a notable student of Prof. John H. Jackson, who has been principally responsible for making international trade law a full-fledged branch of international law.

Tiglao also makes the curious and completely false statement that Sereno was “merely (Feliciano’s) personal legal researcher and documentation lawyer and not of the government” in the Naia III cases. In fact and in law, Sereno, Carolyn B. Lamm and Justice Florentino P. Feliciano were appointed as co-counsel by then Solicitor General Alfredo L. Benipayo, who was principal and statutory counsel of the Philippine government in those cases. In such capacity, Sereno rendered valuable legal services to the legal team on case strategy and fine points of Philippine and international law, and marshaled evidence critical to the government’s cause. Co-counsel Lamm never objected to the participation and involvement of Sereno, as falsely claimed by Tiglao. To the contrary, Lamm fully appreciated Sereno’s material and substantive contributions to securing legal victory for the Philippines.

The time we spent with Sereno working on the Naia III cases gave us the opportunity to see her at close range, working on legal matters of national importance. Tiglao should have given himself a similar opportunity to observe the Chief Justice at work on legal matters. Then he would have been in a position to write objectively and coherently about her work and capabilities.

—FLORENTINO P. FELICIANO,

retired senior associate justice,

Supreme Court,

ALFREDO L. BENIPAYO,

former solicitor general