MANILA, Philippines — Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez rejected an appeal from the heads of the country’s top courts that the House of Representatives “reconsider” a show-cause order against three Court of Appeals justices, urging Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and CA Presiding Justice Andres Reyes Jr. to “discipline” them instead.
“While I appreciate the view of Chief Justice Sereno and CA Presiding Justice Reyes, it may also be best if they can discipline the said members of the Appeals Court for grave abuse of discretion and abuse of authority. Accordingly, it also has the power to rectify the uneasy situation its recklessness has created,” Alvarez said in a statement Thursday.
The committee on good government and public accountability ordered Justices Stephen Cruz, Edwin Sorongon and Nina Antonio-Valenzuela of the CA’s Special Fourth Division to explain why they should not be cited for contempt for issuing their own show-cause order against Alvarez and the House sergeant-at-arms for refusing to present six Ilocos Norte employees detained at the Batasan complex for refusing to answer questions over the allegedly anomalous purchase of vehicles by the provincial government.
Alvarez, for his part, had threatened to have the justices disbarred for supposed ignorance of the law and even to have Congress dissolve the appellate court — the budget of which, after all, comes from Congress, according to him.
In a joint statement on Wednesday, Sereno and Reyes, noting the implications on the principle of separation of powers, said: “It is our hope that the House of Representatives reconsider its order and that it, instead, avail of all legal remedies that are provided to it under the Constitution, the law, and the Rules of Court.”
Alvarez acknowledged that “harmony must be preserved among the co-equal branches of our government under the time-honored principle of separation of powers.”
“However, it has become necessary for the House committee to issue the show cause order against the justices of the CA Special Fourth Division,” he stressed. “Such is a consequence of the court’s order that overstepped its authority and transgressed the committee’s contempt powers, which is a necessary extension of its legislative power affirmed by no less than the Supreme Court in numerous cases.”
Alvarez said the committee’s action was based on jurisprudence and existing law and that it was the Special Fourth Division’s order that “impinges on the core of the legislative power that the Constitution has vested upon the House of Representatives of which we are duty-bound to protect.”
It not only violated the constitutional power of the House but “overturned jurisprudence long established by the Supreme Court since 1950,” he added, pointing to the 2006 case of Sabio v Gordon, in which the tribunal, citing an 1821 American case, reiterated the power of Congress to hold and detain a person in contempt, a power “analogous to that exercised by the courts.”
