Associate Justices Antonio Carpio and Maria Lourdes Sereno of the Supreme Court turned down a motion for them to inhibit in cases pending at the tribunal that seek to stop the Senate from going through the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona.
“Those motions have been denied. Motions for inhibitions are addressed to individual justices and these were denied for lack of merit,” SC spokesperson and court administrator Jose Midas Marquez told reporters in a briefing Tuesday.
Carpio and Sereno were furnished copies of the motion filed by lawyers Homobono Adaza and Alan Paguia during Tuesday’s en banc meeting at the Supreme Court, Marquez said.
Adaza and Paguia claimed that Carpio and Sereno stand to benefit from the Corona impeachment in case the chief justice gets convicted by the Senate sitting as an impeachment court and removed from his post. Thus, the lawyers argued, the associate justices could not be expected to exercise impartiality on the cases pending before the high tribunal. Six petitioners, including
Adaza and Paguia, are
asking the high court to declare as unconstitutional the impeachment complaint against Corona.
The others are tax informer Danilo Lihaylihay, lawyer Vladimir Cabigao, former Integrated Bar of the Philippines president Vicente Millora, lawyer Oliver Lozano, and journalists Herman Laurel and Rodolfo Salandanan and businessman Rufino Martinez.
Adaza and Paguia claimed that Carpio was the closest rival of Corona for the post of chief magistrate before the latter was appointed by then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in May 2010, just a few weeks before the end of her term.
They also labeled Sereno as "openly critical" of the Corona-led court.
In addition, the petitioners criticized Carpio and Sereno for releasing their statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) to the media, and said the action allegedly served to “support the propaganda of the House prosecutors that Corona’s non-disclosure to the public of his SALN was irregular.”
— VS/YA, GMA News
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