The Supreme Court – fallible, overstepping, pliable

Christian Monsod and Adolf Azcuna, former members of the Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitution, scored the recent ruling of the Supreme Court (SC) declaring the fourth impeachment complaint against Vice-President Sara Duterte unconstitutional.

- OSCAR P. LAGMAN, JR.

Monsod, a former chairman of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), said the high court not only misapplied the one-year bar rule but also imposed retroactively new requirements that were never part of past impeachment complaints such as requiring a plenary hearing before referral to the House of Representatives Committee on Justice. "It violates due process," Monsod said.

"You cannot comply with a rule that didn't exist at the time of the act. That's basic." Citing a 2023 Cambridge study, Monsod said justices appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte had voted in favor of government positions 94% of the time. "There is growing concern that our institutions are being weakened," he said. Of the 13 SC associate justices who voted that the impeachment of VP Duterte was unconstitutional, 11 were appointed to the SC by President Duterte, the father of VP Sara Duterte.

Azcuna, a retired associate member of the Supreme Court, said the Court made a crucial but unsupported presumption in ruling that the House acted in bad faith. "They cannot say that because they have no evidence.

There is no finding that the House acted in bad faith. There can be none, because there was no hearing in order to find bad faith... because bad faith is not presumed.