Sara assails House MR: SC needs no correction
Vice President Sara Duterte asked the Supreme Court not to overturn its July 25 decision that voided the impeachment complaint against her, saying the high tribunal’s ruling “requires no factual correction,” contrary to the assertion of the House of Representatives.
Through her defense lawyers, Duterte warned that having the Supreme Court reverse itself would only allow whoever is in power to disregard constitutional restraints in the impeachment process and find a “loophole” to be used against political enemies.
In a 27-page comment filed on Monday, Duterte, through her legal team, assailed the motion for reconsideration (MR) filed by the House of Representatives for being based on “mere diversions obsessed with trivia and blind to the (Supreme Court) decision’s genuine core reasoning.”
The Duterte defense team sought to attack the House’s three main arguments: 1) that the Supreme Court misconstrued the chronology of events since the archiving of the first three impeachment complaints came before the filing of the fourth; 2) that it erred in saying that the fourth complaint was transmitted to the Senate without a plenary vote; and 3) that it wrongly ruled that the prior complaints were effectively dismissed due to Congress’ adjournment.
They said the “wafer-thin proximity” between the archiving of the first three complaints and the filing of the fourth on Feb. 5, which was transmitted to the Senate for trial, undermined the House’s claim that the sequence of events had a meaningful bearing on the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Correction not needed
The House, they said, exploited the definition of the word “initiation” in the landmark cases of Francisco v. House (2003) and Gutierrez v. House (2011) to circumvent the one-year bar rule on filing impeachment complaints.
“The Decision requires no factual correction: it rests on an unshaken foundation of truth,” they said.
“When faced with this kind of abuse of a constitutional mechanism, the Court’s duty is clear, singular, and must be uncompromising: to ensure that its doctrines are never contorted into instruments of evasion, and that constitutional accountability remains both real and enforceable not only for those whose impeachment is sought but more so on those in whom the Constitution vests the exercise of such great power,” they said.
Otherwise, they warned, allowing such maneuvers would only “sanction the dismantling of a vital constitutional check, embolden future actors to manipulate precedents for partisan ends, and weaken the people’s safeguard against grave abuse of discretion committed by people in whom they entrusted their votes.”
‘No plenary approval’
“The Court must therefore speak in terms that admit no doubt: the One-Year Bar Rule is a constitutional mechanism for accountability, not a loophole for the powerful,” the defense team added.
The House MR should be dismissed also because it lacked plenary approval from the chamber under the 20th Congress, the defense lawyers added.
It was never submitted for plenary deliberation or voting, as shown in the official orders of business published on the House website between July 25, when the Supreme Court issued its ruling, and Aug. 4, when the MR was filed by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), they said.
“(The MR) therefore is unauthorized given that it has no imprimatur of the 20th Congress,” they added, stressing that the House is not a continuing body and that each Congress acts separately from its predecessor.
They further questioned whether the OSG acted unilaterally or at the behest of Speaker Martin Romualdez, who had publicly commented on the filing.
“As a deliberative body, it is the collective will of the Members that directs the HOR’s actions. Neither the Speaker nor its counsel may arrogate unto themselves that authority,” the Duterte counsels said.
By bypassing the plenary, they said, the filing of the MR was not only procedurally defective but also an “unauthorized incursion upon the institutional prerogatives of the 20th Congress.”
Duterte’s comment was signed by lawyers from the Fortun Narvasa and Salazar law firm, as well as the Vice President’s spokesperson, Michael Poa.
