Quo warranto may set bad precedent, lead to constitutional crisis — Sereno spokesperson

A spokesperson for Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno on Tuesday raised the possibility of the quo warranto petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida against the top magistrate becoming a precedent to remove justices on a whim.

"If you have to accept this as a ground for the ouster for a sitting member of the court, aba, I tell you: you're opening a very dangerous kind of [gate] here," lawyer Carlo Cruz said in an interview on ANC's "Headstart."

"You're going to enable any other Solicitor General who does not like a sitting justice of the Supreme Court to utilize this quo warranto procedures for purposes of those whom he may dislike," he added.

Calida filed a quo warranto petition against Sereno for her supposed failure to file the Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth from working as a professor at the University of the Philippines while applying for the post in 2012.

Cruz said Sereno's supposed failure to comply with administrative requirements should not be used to assess her competency.

He said the petition itself went against everything that was taught to law students and can create a "constitutional crisis" if pursued.

"Here, we are pursuing something which is totally inconsistent with precepts that I learned as a student, with concepts that I now teach as a teacher," Cruz said.

"You ask if that may be a constitutional crisis: I think so. But it is one that would have to be carefully pursued, avoided if possible, I pray, by the Supreme Court," he added.

Cruz pointed out the absurdity of persisting in quo warranto, which questions Sereno's qualification for her position, despite the impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.

"Why will you pursue that if you insist on an impeachment trial? Totally incongruent," he said. " The issues are totally different."

"Maybe quo warrantos will proceed independently of the impeachment proceedings, yes, because there are different issues involved, but to our minds, the quo warranto petition is groundless, it's baseless, it's unprecedented, it's against the Constitution," Cruz later added.

Instead of persisting with the petition, he said impeachment proceedings should be allowed to take its course in order to "follow the Constitution." —Rie Takumi/KBK, GMA News