What was Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno thinking when she issued a resolution—purporting to be the product of the Supreme Court’s deliberations—last Nov. 27 authorizing the reopening of the Regional Court Administrative Office in Cebu City?

She may be chief justice but she had no authority to do so. The reopening had to be with the approval of the Supreme Court as a body. Did she forget that she is not the high tribunal but only its head?

In simplest terms, the Sereno resolution was illegal. Revoking it was a no brainer for the other members of the SC. They had to. They would have all become complicit in the commission on an illegal act: falsely stating that a document is what it is not, and proceeding to act as if the false document was a valid and legal one.

It was not just a case of Sereno issuing a memorandum calling for a reopening of the Cebu office. She had, in fact, made it appear that the SC en banc had signed the resolution. What she did, therefore, smacks of falsification of public records. Lesser beings like Citizen Juan de la Cruz would have spent time in prison if found guilty of such a crime.

But not the Chief Justice.

It is hard to imagine any other judge or clerk of court in the entire judiciary doing what the Chief Justice did without being charged with a crime, put on trial and finally punished. Even in the executive and legislative branches of government, officials are made accountable for faking documents. In the private sector, a board chairman or company secretary who creates documents and claims that these were approved by the majority of the board members will end up in jail.

The associate justices did right in refusing to go along with the CJ Sereno’s plan to make her fictional document a true one by passing a resolution to reopen the Cebu administrative court. By refusing to legalize the CJ’s illegal document they have decided to stand for the truth and for proper procedures.

But it would have been more just if they had also reprimanded their chief. Doing that would have added to the public’s confidence in the highest magistracy of the land. It would also have erased any feeling judges and employees of the lower courts might have that the strict laws and rules that apply to them do not apply to the highest of the Supremes.

Impeachment is the only way to punish a CJ
The fact is that impeachment is really the only way a Chief Justice can be punished for a wrongdoing. But the SC associate justices probably did not want any such thing to happen again, remembering the unpleasant impeachment and subsequent trial in the Senate of former Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Many of the associate justices were reportedly in favor of Sereno’s plan to decentralize the court’s administrative functions, especially with regards to the lower courts. Indeed, this makes sense given the constantly expanding bureaucracy that is the Philippines’ judicial system. But everything has to be done according to law, otherwise any chief justice can whimsically issue resolutions left and right, even when they don’t make sense. Chaos would certainly follow.

CJ Ma. Lourdes Sereno is one of the three most powerful officials in the government. As head of the judiciary, she is co-equal to President Benigno Aquino 3rd of the executive and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Speaker Feliciano Belmonte of the legislative. Imagine what the effect would be if Aquino, Enrile or Belmonte were to wantonly disregard the law and correct procedure.

What makes this affair worse is that Sereno is seen by all as the ultimate judge of the law. Someone like President Aquino may not fully understand the law at all times because he is not a lawyer, but Sereno? She is no mere lawyer or judge, but the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

It boggles the mind that she would ignore the legal procedures to reopen the administrative office in the Visayas. Could it be that she was unaware of those procedures?

Associate justices not rubber stamps
It may be argued that the infraction committed by Sereno caused no real harm to anyone. All she did was authorize the reopening of an office, one that was necessary in the first place. It is possible that the SC en banc would have agreed to the reopening if they had been properly informed and allowed studied its pros and cons.

Instead, Sereno manufactured the resolution. When Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-de Castro sought an explanation, the CJ avoided for as long as possible the confrontation with her associate justices. She even found the time to travel abroad when Manila Times news made her illegal act public.

Since the en banc overturned her decision, Sereno has opted to keep silent on the matter. She could not even bring herself to admit her wrongdoing, much less issue a mea culpa and promise never to make false papers again.

Once upon a time, a head of the executive branch decided that he was the state. President Ferdinand Marcos decided that he should have all the power and make the decisions himself. He abolished the Congress and made the judiciary his rubber stamp.

What was CJ Sereno thinking? That her associate justices would just allow themselves to be her rubber stamp? Thank God they did not.