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Monday, October 24, 2005
Plea to lift arrest warrant v. ex-poll exec junked
MANILA -- The Supreme Court (SC) dismissed the petition filed by self-declared digital audio expert, Jonathan Tiongco, seeking to order the House of Representatives to revoke the warrant of arrest issued against former Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.
In a resolution, the SC said Tiongco has no standing or cause of action to assail the warrant of arrest issued by the Lower House against Garcillano.
"The proper party to judicially challenge the warrant would be Garcillano himself, as he would be intimately familiar with whatever rights of his may have been violated or injury sustained by reason of such a warrant. Whatever empathy Tiongco may have for Garcillano cannot metamorphose into legal standing the former may exercise on behalf of the latter," the SC said.
The high court said Tiongco did not sustain any legal injury or he did not have any legal rights impaired by reason of the warrant of arrest against the former election official.
"Unless there is any legal tie that binds Tiongco to Garcillano that this Court or the public at large has not been aware of, there is no reason to allow one to seek judicial relief on behalf of the other. The petition is dismissed with cost against petitioner (Tiongco)," it ruled.
Tiongco's petition stemmed from the significant public interest over the emergence and circulation of voice recordings of telephone conversations between President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Garcillano purportedly to rig the May 10 elections last year.
The House of Representatives conducted its investigation and issued a warrant for contempt against the former election commissioner. Garcillano's whereabouts, however, has yet to be traced by the government and the Lower House.
In a petition, Tiongco, who was commissioned by Arroyo loyalist and Environment Secretary Michael Defensor, said he had the opportunity to examine the recordings until he came to the conclusion that the tapes, which are also known as "Hello Garci tapes," were tampered.
He said that his warnings on the dubious nature of the tapes had been ignored by Cavite Representative Gilbert Remulla, chairman of the House committee on information, which conducted hearings on the wiretapping controversy.
He also narrated that the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) freely distributed the subject recordings on its Internet website, which also contained transactions on the recordings.
Characterizing the distribution by PCIJ as illegal, Tiongco also asked the high court to "order the House of Representatives to lift the warrant of arrest against Garcillano so that the former Comelec official may be united with his family and be given his right to due process; Sheila Coronel and the PCIJ be stopped from further distributing the recordings and their transcript through the Internet and that the libelous story written by Vinia Datinguinoo pertaining to the libel suit filed by Tiongco and other related articles be removed from the PCIJ website immediately."
The SC ruled that Tiongco's petition is barely comprehensible, especially in identifying any cause of action justifiable through an original action before the high court.
It said under Rule 65, the jurisdiction of the court over the special civil actions of certiorari, prohibition and mandamus is limited to cases imputing grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of any tribunal, board or officer exercising judicial or quasi-judicial functions.
"As regards the allegations against Sheila Coronel and PCIJ, the Court simply has no jurisdiction over an original action for damages, libel, or any suit relating to any injury or slight sustained by Tiongco against these journalists. Neither Sheila Coronel nor PCIJ can be considered a branch or instrumentality of the government," the SC said.
The high court said it cannot order PCIJ to remove from its website the recordings and certain published stories. (ECV/Sunnex)
(October 24, 2005 issue)
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