Embattled Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo of the Supreme Court will take a “wellness leave” starting next week to undergo a heart bypass, but has no intention of resigning his post despite an impeachment complaint against him pending before the House committee on justice.
Before Tuesday’s en banc session, Del Castillo and SC spokesperson and court administrator Jose Midas Marquez had a talk.
“He did not give any indication about retiring and I think he will continue,” Marquez told reporters during a press briefing. “I think he is scheduled beginning next week… to go on wellness leave lasting for two to three weeks, so he can undergo a heart operation,” he added.
Del Castillo is being accused of plagiarism in his ponencia or discourse that dismissed the petition by Filipina comfort women to compel the Philippine government to help them seek redress by way of compensation the atrocities and sex abuse they suffered in the hands of Japanese soldiers during World War II.
The associate justice was scheduled for a heart bypass late last year but it was move to February, Marquez noted.
Del Castillo already underwent a heart bypass last year, but “… apparently, the bypass was not very successful because the arteries remain to be clamped, except for one. There is also some degree of urgency that he undergo another procedure,” according to the court spokesperson. Embattled Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo of the Supreme Court will take a “wellness leave” starting next week to undergo a heart bypass, but has no intention of resigning his post despite an impeachment complaint against him pending before the House committee on justice. In the course of Corona impeachment
This week, reports have it that Del Castillo, 62, is considering early retirement, even resigning his post, to spare himself travails of going through an impeachment trial.
He denied such reports. The associate justice will reach the mandatory retirement age of 70 in 2019.
Reports about his early retirement or resignation surfaced in the wake of a confirmation by the House committee on justice — in the course of the impeachment trail against Chief Justice Renato Corona — that the impeachment complaint against Del Castillo was sufficient in substance.
The lead prosecutor in the Corona impeachment, Iloilo Representative, also heads the House committee on justice.
The group of UP Law Professor Harry Roque, representing the petitioners led by Isabelita Vinuya, filed the impeachment complaint against Del Castillo.
The complainants claimed that Del Castillo betrayed public trust, when he supposedly plagiarized his decision in the Vinuya case, by culling from at least three sources without proper attribution. They also claimed that the associate justice made it appear that those articles supported the arguments in his ponencia. — VS, GMA News
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