Bersamin hits back at Leonen over JPE bail

MANILA, Philippines - The conflict between two magistrates of the Supreme Court (SC) stemming from the decision last week granting bail to Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile in the pork barrel plunder case has gone from bad to worse.

Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin, who wrote the ruling, hit back at Associate Justice Marvic Leonen in a rejoinder submitted to the full court during session yesterday.

Bersamin specifically accused Leonen of overstepping his bounds and lacking respect for the majority ruling.

“At this point, I wish to state that Justice Leonen overstepped the bounds of respect for the majority; once the vote was taken, he had absolutely no business implying anything against how the majority had voted, or how their consensus had been reached,” read the rejoinder, a copy of which was obtained by reporters from sources.

“He (Leonen) was a member of the minority; he should have stayed there. He should have confined himself to expressing his losing views. He should not fret and assail the process that he could not control from his side of the vote,” Bersamin stressed.

Bersamin believes Leonen was just whining with his losing opinion and instead of respecting the majority ruling, he went out of control and displayed his “self-righteous mindset.”

He said the allegations of Leonen in his dissent were “false and unreasonable” and also “unfair to me as the ponente (author) and to the seven other members of the Court who joined me.

“I could have tolerated the unfairness, except that the comments were published and soon unavoidably became fodder for people of closed minds and clear biases to criticize my intelligence, regionalism, loyalty and what else… In this age of the Internet, I simply cannot be tolerant but must respond,” he lamented.

Bersamin stressed there was no deceit or sudden revision in grounds on the ruling circulated to justices after their voting on the case last Aug. 18, as claimed by Leonen.

“The majority was well aware that what was to be voted on was the pruned-down version simply because there was no demand from any of them to still first see the original version. On the part of those who voted against, none of them, including Justice Leonen, demanded to first see again the older version before voting,” he explained.

Bersamin alleged Leonen raised issues to delay the voting.           

“He asked for time to circulate a draft. I saw this as a move to delay the vote. It was in exasperation more than anything else that I said that I would revert to the original version, and that the case should now be put to a vote. Much discussion followed. Then the vote was taken,” he said.                           

Bersamin also turned the tables on Leonen and accused him of violating Section 2, Rule 10 of the Internal Rules of Court on matters of confidential deliberations of the SC justices.

He also recalled Leonen even approached him during the Baguio summer session “to suggest to limit the justification for granting bail to humanitarian grounds.”

“He should have a clear recollection of this. Hoping that the Court could be unanimous, I said then that I would give his suggestion a serious consideration,” Bersamin said.      

Bersamin added the dissenting justices were the ones who did not read Leonen’s opinion when they signed it, saying “two of them signed in favor of his dissenting opinion days before the opinion he wrote for them was completed.”

The rejoinder was supposed to be tackled in session of the justices yesterday, but Leonen asked that the deliberations be reset to Sept. 28. A majority of the justices, however, decided to just set the voting in their next session on Sept. 1.– With Paolo Romero