Leonen on impeachment complaint: This is not time for 'false issues'

Facing an impeachment complaint, Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Marvic Leonen on Monday said Congress should not spend its time attending to "false issues" while many Filipinos are in need.

Leonen made the statement shortly after one Edwin Cordevilla of a group called the Filipino League of Advocates For Good Government accused him of slow case disposition and a failure to file mandatory wealth declarations for years.

"Given the urgent and pressing needs of our people during this time of crises, we are confident that our leaders will do the right thing," the justice said.

"Certainly, this may not be the time to attend to false issues raised by some for clearly personal or vindictive reasons," he said.

Leonen said he has not received a copy of the complaint.

"Regardless, we wish everyone the best for this season of kindness and compassion. May we all continue to help others who are still truly in need," he said.

The impeachment complaint was endorsed by Ilocos Norte Representative Angelo Marcos Barba, a cousin of former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.

It can be recalled that Marcos recently failed to convince the SC, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), to re-assign his election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo to a justice other than Leonen, the current justice-in-charge.

In seeking Leonen's inhibition from the poll protest, Marcos said the justice was biased against his family and that the four-year-old case was delayed under his watch.

Solicitor General Jose Calida, who campaigned for Marcos in the 2016 elections, also asked for Leonen's recusal but was similarly rejected by the PET.

Prior to filing the motion for inhibition, Calida and lawyer Lorenzo Gadon requested copies of Leonen's Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) from the SC "for purposes of preparing a quo warranto petition." The SC denied their request.

Quo warranto was the method Calida used to successfully move for the ouster of then-chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno in 2018.

Gadon, who also sought Sereno's impeachment, assisted Cordevilla in moving against Leonen on Monday.

Human rights lawyer Edre Olalia, meanwhile, pointed out Gadon's "checkered record" in questioning the motives of the impeachment attempt.

"The vulnerability of these kinds of complaints is that they all at once suffer from impressions of insufficiency, nay defects, in form and substance," Olalia said in a statement.

"With the checkered record of the goader, it is suspect and comes not from the purest of intentions. At any rate, we need decent dissents, nay erudite independence in our judiciary. That is what these nuisance complaints want to impeach," he added. —KBK, GMA News