THE PROSECUTION team questioned the decision-making process of the Ateneo Student Judicial Court (SJC) in the wake of the court’s rejection of the impeachment complaint against Sanggunian President Gio Alejo.
“We [the prosecution] were not given any chance, at any point in time, to present or even send in our evidence. We were not told to. This is unfair, idiotic, stupid, sophomoric, and honestly just plain irresponsible,” said lead prosecutor and former Christian Union for Socialist and Democratic Advancement (Crusada) Premier Miguel Rivera.
He added, “[They] rushed the entire process and therefore did not give us the right to due process.”
Alejo, on the other hand, believes that the counterarguments he forwarded to the SJC contributed to his acquittal.
“I gave strong counterarguments for them to decide to drop the impeachment [complaint] against me. Also, the way the impeachment complaint was filed and the manner it was done was really questionable anyway,” he said.
The said complaint was brought about by the surprise plebiscite during the Sanggunian General Elections last February.
On February 14, plaintiffs Rivera and former Crusada Solicitor General Alenz De Torres petitioned the SJC to investigate the surprise plebiscite. Two days later, the SJC made a response which found probable cause for Alejo’s impeachment.
On February 19, a formal impeachment complaint was filed by several Crusada members and Sanggunian officers. Alejo, however, sent his motion to dismiss to the SJC on February 29.
On March 1, the SJC released another statement which said that it rejected the impeachment complaint.
All members of the SJC refused to comment on the issue.
Problems on process and precedence
“The most basic problem here is that the prosecution was not informed that there was a motion by the defendants to dismiss the complaint,” Rivera said.
He stressed that the prosecution and the defense should be made aware of what the other side is doing with regard to their transactions with the SJC. This ensures that all actions conform to the letter of the law, he said.
Rivera cited that when their side released the articles of impeachment to the public, a copy was sent to Alejo, but he alleged that the defense and the SJC fell short of transparency in their own legal moves.
“Not informing us was simply idiotic, a pinnacle of incompetence, and sheer laziness from the court,” he said.
Rivera also said that no motion for summary of judgment was put forward. This means, he said, that the impeachment should have pushed through. He claimed that the court made a decision by looking at the evidence of the defense only.
The problem, Rivera emphasized, was that the prosecution had no chance to present evidence.
“The burden of proof was on the prosecution but we were not allowed to bring out our proofs. It’s unjust. This is a corrupt decision. It’s a permanent blight on the name of the SJC,” he said.
While Rivera’s criticisms lashed at the process, former Crusada Secretary-General Bian Villanueva took particular issue with the reasons the SJC gave for rejecting the impeachment complaint, for which he was also a prosecutor.
Found in the statement released by the SJC is its conclusion that “the actions that the [Committee on Constitutional Review Co-Chairs Alejo and Nicole Reyes] undertook and the procedures that they followed are based solely on precedence.”
Villanueva criticized the fact that the SJC pointed to precedence as the main reason, considering that the plebiscite initiated in the latest general elections and in previous ones were subject to different Sanggunian constitutions and circumstances.
“The court shows however that as long as it was done before, under a different context, committees could act outside the ambit of fact-finding, without the review process that the [Sanggunian Central Board (CB)] should initiate,” he said.
“Effectively, the statement says it wasn’t wrong that Mr. Alejo did not bring the proposal to hold a plebiscite to the CB for final approval, because it happened before anyways. Those grounds are not only wanting but dubious to say the least.”
Act of retraction
“[The SJC] were the ones who enjoined us to file against [Alejo and Reyes] in the first place and all of a sudden they turn on their initial statement? I’m really disappointed,” said School of Social Sciences Chairperson Toni Potenciano, who was also a complainant.
She added that people need to see the move of the SJC as a retraction. Taking back its initial statement, she said, showed that the court “might have been a little irresponsible” in analyzing the whole issue.
Whereas Potenciano said that the SJC’s supposed retraction would affect its credibility, Rivera stressed that it had no credibility anymore.
“[The SJC] had the gall to invite me to prosecute Mr. Alejo, only to shame us by throwing out the complaint and saying that there was no probable cause,” Rivera said.
Rivera and Potenciano shared the same sentiments about how the SJC seemed to have rushed the decision.
“It seems as if the Court wanted to dismiss the decision a priori, so they just went about looking for excuses… to dismiss the case,” Rivera said.
Meanwhile, Potenciano said, “I’m no legal expert, but the whole thing strikes me as if it were rushed and the SJC didn’t really want to deal with anything anymore.”
Effect on Ateneo politics
For Villanueva, there are two implications of the SJC decision on democracy in Ateneo politics.
“[It] seems like the CB was effectively robbed of its power to vote on a thing as important as a plebiscite and the court found it perfectly alright and legal,” he said.
“[Second], because of this, and by extension, the people were unable to participate fully in the process of constitutional revision.”
He also said, “The petitioners filed the complaint in order to send a basic message: offices are beholden with responsibility, and to ignore that responsibility in the name of a grand vision of what should be done, ignores the very core of democratic politics.”
