SERENO IMPEACH PROCEEDINGS

SC CLERK OF COURT DODGES QUESTIONS FROM HOUSE PANEL INVOKES CONFIDENTIALITY

By NICOLE-ANNE C. LAGRIMAS

            Supreme Court Clerk of Court Felipa Anama last week repeatedly refused to disclose which Supreme Court justice served as the member-in-charge for the transfer of venue of Maute case proceedings from Mindanao elsewhere even as lawmakers pointed out that the matter was “academic” since it has been resolved.

            While Anama confirmed that the case, which stemmed from a letter of request from Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, was raffled to a justice, she invoked confidentiality rules of the High Court when she said she could not say who became the member-in-charge, despite a sustained round of questioning by members of the House Committee on Justice.

            Anama cited Rule 7, Section 3, of the Internal Rules of the Supreme Court, which stipulates that the result of the raffle of bar matters, administrative cases, and criminal cases where the penalty imposed by the lower court is life imprisonment “shall be treated with strict confidentiality.”

            According to this rule, matters outside of the confidentiality clause shall be made available by the Clerk of Court to parties to the case or their duly authorized representatives. It was raised by members of the panel that the confidentiality matter was “academic” because the case has been “disposed of.”

“Kung natapos na po ang kaso, wala na tayong pakialam doon sa raffle,” said committee Vice Chairperson and former Court of Appeals Justice Vicente Veloso.

            Anama was then asked by panel Chair Reynaldo Umali that the lawmakers were not discovering the identity of the justice to whom the case was raffled, but were trying to “isolate that it is not the Chief Justice who was the member-in-charge.”

            To this, Anama said: “Hindi po kay Justice [Noel] Tijam, kaya doon po sa labing-apat mamili na po kayo doon.”

            Anama’s reply seemed to frustrate the panel members, including Umali, who said, “Attorney Anama, ‘wag po tayong maging pilosopo dito,” and urged the clerk of court to “cooperate” in the impeachment proceedings. For her part, Anama said she “respects the committee.”

            `In the impeachment complaint of lawyer Lorenzo Gadon against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, he alleged that the transfer of Maute cases was assigned to Associate

Justice Noel Tijam. Gadon alleged further that despite this initial assignment, Sereno “caused” the matter to be “raffled” to her.

            The Chief Justice herself, in her verified answer to the complaint, said she was the member-in-charge for the matter. The subject at hand picks up from last week’s hearing, where Aguirre testified on the series of events surrounding the supposed “50- to 52- day delay” in the granting of his letter to the Supreme Court requesting for the transfer of Maute cases from the then-wartorn part of Mindanao, citing a lack of facilities and the obvious danger to prosecutors and judges.

            The cases were ultimately transferred to Taguig City Trial Courts, but the allegation centers on the alleged “intentional delay,” which Sereno’s camp has called “baseless” on the grounds that the processing of the Aguirre’s request was first taken up for a shorter period of time.

            Sereno's lawyers said the High Court acted on Aguirre’s initial request within 8 days, took another 14 days to discuss Aguirre’s request for reconsideration, and another 14 to issue its resolution granting the Cabinet official’s motion for reconsideration. 

            Sereno’s camp also refused to comment on Anama’s motive behind her repeated denial of disclosing the information asked of her.

            “As to the state of mind of Attorney Anama, I cannot speak for her, but to be fair I think she’s only invoking the Supreme Court internal rules at kung anuman yung rationale no’n, kung anuman yung dahilan sa likod no’n, ay dapat din nating igalang dahil ‘yan ay alituntunin ng Supreme Court,” Sereno lawyer and spokesperson Josa Deinla told reporters.

It also could not be said that Anama was “covering” for the Chief Justice, she said.

            “Feeling ko, sarili niya namang desisyon ‘yun, hindi naman namin masasabi na... Remember Clerk of Court [siya] for the Supreme Court en banc, ang loyalty niya is to her office at sa buong Korte Suprema. So ‘di natin pwedeng sabihing pinagtatakpan niya si Chief Justice dito,” she said. /MP