"x x x.
Bernas says SC and Impeachment Court are co-equal. But, he adds, SC, as final arbiter of the law, may intervene in impeachment court proceedings, e.g. TRO it has issued re PSB dollar account of CJ Corona.
We disagree with Bernas (who, incidentally, should not be worshiped by media as the omnipotent and all-knowing god of constitutional law among all members of the Phil. Bar [which he is not], w/o cross-checking his possible bias, prejudice, and interest in the CJ Corona impeachment case).
Let's not buy his thoughts hook, line and sinker. Let's use our own collective mind, conscience and consciousness as a sovereign people to determine the truth, to interpret the Constitution and to shape our national future as a nation. The sovereign Filipino people are the highest interpreter and enforcer of the Constitution. Not the SC.
We believe SC should have the delicadeza to desist from hastily acting on the PSB Rue 65 petition there being no showing that PSB had previously filed with the impeachment court a motion to quash the subpoena issued by the impeachment court. PSB did not exhaust its available internal procedural remedies w/in the impeachment court structure, a requirement of Rule 65.
The SC should not have fallen into the trap set by CJ Corona, when he filed his petitions/ therewith, whereby CJ Corona, in fine, converted the SC into a pool of referees and saviors designed to save his neck, name, liberty, and multi-million retirement fund.
We strongly hope and pray that the impeachment court would have the moral courage and principled conviction to assert its special and unique constitutional powers for the sake of the country and that it would not cowardly cave in to the institutional arrogance and domination of the SC ("the gods of Padre Faura", as the media calls them).
The people are beginning to conclude that the SC has the bad habit of invoking "separation of powers", "judicial independence" and "expanded power of judicial review" in its verbose and high-sounding decisions when it feels that such an invocation conveniently suits its own selfish institutional interests and its very own political and financial survival.
Filipinos now seem to hold the view that the SC has lost all moral ascendancy to perform its constitutional mandate as the final arbiter of the law and as the last bulwark of justice. They want to overhaul, clean, and purify the SC, invoking all possible options as the true sovereign, an OCCUPY THE SUPREME COURT option included, notwithstanding the ensuing national pain and sacrifice involved, if that's the best and the only way to restore genuine reform and justice in the country.
It seems it's time now for the sovereign Filipino people to rescind the "social contract".
Here's P-Noy take on the SC's TRO re CJ Corona's dollar accounts. -
"“[In] the Constitution—they might say that they are lawyers and I’m not—the English words ‘sole’ and ’exclusively’ are clear … in referring to the power of the House to impeach and referring to the Senate’s right to try,” Mr. Aquino said in Dumaguete City on Wednesday afternoon.
“So I don’t get the legal theory that all of a sudden the Supreme Court can involve itself in the impeachment process when the Constitution that we all swore to defend says that one part of the impeachment belongs exclusively to the House and the other to the Senate,” he said."
newsinfo.inquirer.net
Neither the Supreme Court nor the Senate impeachment court is superior over the other; the Constitution is.
x x x."
