When the High Court Starts to Misinform

THERE WAS AN ATTEMPT to misinform the Filipinos, coming from the Supreme Court lately through its spokesperson Atty. Midas Marquez, its Acting Chief of the Public Information Office.

Midas claimed that he had an affidavit signed (reportedly under pressure) from the person involved in the distribution of official case documents of Ombudsman Chief Merceditas Gutierrez in her petition to have the High Court stop the impeachment hearing against her at the House of Representatives by the Committee on Justice, docketed as G. R. No. 193450. One claim said that copies of the 65-page petition (248 pages, including the annexes) were distributed and placed on the conference table of teh en banc session conference room on 14 September 2010.

In a press statement issued dated 9 March 2011, Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno put the facts clearly and unequivocally: "My office received the Petition on September 14, 2010, at 2:15 p.m. No other copy was received by me or by my staff either before the session or during the session. In fact, no personnel of the Supreme Court came into the en banc session conference room to distribute the petition, nor did we see copies of the petition lying on the conference table for each of teh justices."

In fact, Sereno continued, "My office sent a letter dated March 2, 2011 stating that we received teh Petition on September 14, 2010, at 2:15 p.m., with the attachment of copies of the relevant pages of my office log book as well as the copy of the Delivery Receipt taht was distributed by the Clerk of Court that shows the date when each of the justices' offices received teh petition. Until now, these facts remain undisputed by Atty. Felipa Anama, who was teh Acting Clerk of Court on September 14, 2010."

The attempt to misinform the public apparently came at a time when a member of the House of Representative has submitted an impeachment complaint to the Committee on Justice against eight justices of the Supreme Court, with the hasty granting of the Gutierrez Petition despite lack of deliberation on that petition resulting from the non-distribution of the copy of said petition to the justices before the en banc session as one of its bases. 

This is an alarming incident. A Court that misinforms is a bastion of justice that has lost its way. And it appears that the attempt was not an accident, but a deliberate one. Despite the communications between offices resulting from this incident when it happened, why should Midas attempt to get an affidavit that will state information other than the facts of the incident?

And I suspect that there will be, at least, a scapegoat whose head will roll to take the blame on this sorry way that the High Court is doing its judiciary duty in favor of Gutierrez. Like the case of plagiarism, which found a scapegoat in the legal researcher who prepared the decision, the Court will be on the prowl right now searching for the one who will take the blame so it can wash its hands, particularly the hands of those majority of justices who voted to grant the Petition without deliberation.

These turn of events were not isolated in the current Supreme Court that raised so much doubts among, and dashed confidence of, the Filipino people on its competence, its intellectual honesty, and its independence. These are symptoms, that sharp observers will notice, on the credibility problem that is rocking the High Court right now, not from external elements opposing it (as what Midas claimed), but from its own highly questionable discharge of duty, including its negatively controversial decisions and over-reaching exercise of political power using the judicial cudgel under its control.

At the end of the day, something has to be done to clean up the present Court from the growing cancer in its midst.