FORMER deputy house speaker Quezon Representative Lorenzo Tanada III said on Friday that the country is in crisis following the recent ruling of the Supreme Court (SC) on the quo warranto case that successfully removed Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno from her post.
Tanada spoke in a forum on “Constitutional Crisis and Tyranny” organized by the Movement against Tyranny held at the Social Action Center at the Diocese of Bacolod Friday.
Tanada said: "our country is in crisis because of tyranny. The SC is the last bulwark of democracy which harmonizes with the Constitution of the Republic which is the supreme law of the land.”
All other laws should harmonize with the Constitution, he added.
"If the law is unconstitutional then it is not enforceable. But the sad thing is 73 percent of the Filipinos don't' know about the Constitution,” he said.
He added: “The Duterte administration wanted to change the Constitution. But the question, do we really need to change the Constitution?”
Last September 2017, the impeachment move against Sereno started with more witnesses, the complaint was not well written as the claims against Sereno were mostly hearsays.
The purpose of the impeachment is mainly to remove impeachable officers like Sereno, Tanada said.
The House Committee on Justice invited the six Justices to attend the hearing. “Their presence in the Committee hearing was unprecedented because the invitation came from a co-equal branch,” he said.
“Those justices spoke against Sereno. The Committee on Justice decided to impeach Sereno,” he added.
But despite the committee's decision to impeach Sereno, the Committee on Justice is not sure if the complaint will pass through the Senate, he said.
He explained: “of the 14 Supreme Court Justices, eight voted to remove Sereno. If compare it to the impeachment, it will take 2/3 or 16 Senators to vote in favor of the impeachment which is quite uphill.”
Sereno was appointed in 2012 and the quo warranto case should have been dismissed because of the one year rule.
"We are facing a crisis because the judicial independence has disappeared. The SC has committed suicide and is no longer insulated from politics," Tanada said.
Meanwhile, the Movement against Tyranny is an alliance of groups and personalities that aim to unite all freedom-loving Filipinos against tyranny and build a broad front to counter the increasing fascism and militarist rule of the Duterte administration.
The movement aims to break the culture of impunity and the fear, silence, and acquiescence that have followed President Duterte's brutal war on drugs, all-out war approach to armed conflicts and declaration of Martial Law in Mindanao.