Just the start of SC cleansing?
The impending impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Mariano de Castillo now brings the Legislative branch of the government on the side of the Executive against the Judiciary.
This is a double- pronged attack and there’s no way that the High Court headed by the Chief Justice Renato Corona, closely identified with Gloria Arroyo, could win.
Of course, Malacañang had a hand in it. If President Aquino frontally attacked Corona in public, it’s easy to imagine what his people are doing behind the scene.
But in Philippine politics, that’s par for the course.
Malacañang must have delivered the message so convincingly that even the chair of the House’s committee on justice, Iloilo Representative Niel Tupas Jr. , was surprised by the overwhelming vote of 40-7 finding the long-pending plagiarism complaint accusing Del Castillo of betrayal of public trust sufficient in substance.
Seven months ago, the complaint barely made it through. In a close vote of 11-10, the 55-member committee declared the impeachment complaint sufficient in form.
We are happy that the comfort women Lolas, the complainants in the impeachment complaint, will have a good chance to obtain justice, not necessarily the compensation that they were demanding from the Japanese government but from the injustice that they suffered from the High Court especially from Del Castillo,the ponente of the decision dismissing their case.
CenterLaw’s Harry Roque, lawyer of the Lolas, issued a statement saying “Our clients – the Comfort Women – are grateful to the House Justice on Committee for showing that the legislature will not stand for dereliction of duty and betrayal of the public trust committed by members of the land’s High Court.”
Roque said “The impeachment complaint lodged against Mariano Del Castillo is for a plagiarized and twisted decision involving the denial of a legal remedy to those who were raped by the Japanese during World War II. Denial of a legal remedy through plagiarism and misrepresentation is betrayal of public trust.”
“Plagiarism being an incident of intellectual slothfulness is dereliction of duty, and where it also involves misrepresentation – in that the ideas copied from others were twisted to suit a contrary opinion – it is tantamount to a betrayal of public trust twice over,”Roque further said.
The complainants: victims of war and High Court
The history of the case goes back to the reparation suits filed in Japan by about 60 Filipino women who were victims of rape and other crimes by Japanese soldiers during World War II.
It was dismissed by Japanese courts saying that the Philippine government must sponsor their claims. Thus in 2004, the Lolas filed suit in the Philippine Supreme Court to compel the Philippine government to espouse, or sponsor their claims for compensation from the Japanese government.
On April 28, 2010, the High Court in a decision penned del Castillo said the Court greatly sympathized with the cause of petitioners but “ Regrettably, it is not within our power to order the Executive Department to take up the petitioners’ cause. Ours is only the power to urge and exhort the Executive Department to take up petitioners’ cause.”
The Court upheld the position of the Executive Department, then under Arroyo, that the Lolas’ claims “were dealt with in the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 and the bilateral Reparations Agreement of 1956.”
Roque, with the help of UP Law students, found a number of provisions cited by del Castillo and concurred in by nine justices including then Chief justice Reynato Puno and now Chief Justice Renato Corona lifted verbatim from other articles without any attribution.
Roque said not only did Del Castillo plagiarize.” In this controversy, the evidence bears out the fact not only of extensive plagiarism but also of twisting the true intents of the plagiarized sources by the ponencia to suit the arguments of the assailed Judgment.”
Roque filed a petition before the SC against Castillo’s theft of other author’s works but it was dismissed by the High Court blaming Bill Gates’ Microsoft program.
The case created a side issue when the High Court reprimanded faculty members of UP College of Law headed by then Dean Marvic Leonen (he is now the chief government negotiator with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front) for issuing a statement asking del Castillo to resign.
This is the second attempt of the House of Representatives to impeach a member of the Supreme Court, a co-equal body. In 2003, the House impeached then Chief Justice Hilario Davide for corruption and misuse of the Judicial Development Fund based on two impeachment complaints.
Davide was saved by his own court in a questionable decision that declared the impeachment complaint unconstitutional arguing that only one impeachment proceeding can be initiated in one year.
Bad luck for Del Castillo. His colleagues could not save him. His patron, Gloria Arroyo, is also not in a position to save him.
The House action on the complaint versus del Castillo, whether part of Aquino’s bigger campaign to “reform” the judiciary, has renewed the hope of the surviving Lolas for justice,
God indeed works in mysterious ways.