All Were Asked to Resign : Aquino Faces Question of High Court Justices

MANILA — Demonstrators outside the pink and white Supreme Court building charged Friday that the justices were stooges of the ousted President Ferdinand E. Marcos and demanded that they resign.

“You have been appointed based on your blind loyalty to the deposed tyrant and nothing more,” a placard carried by one of the demonstrators said.

The 15-seat Supreme Court was an important tool for Marcos. Its members, all appointed by him, gave legal covering to many of his most dictatorial acts. While it did not always do exactly as he wanted--last December, it declined to let him off the hook on his own ill-considered decision to call the a snap presidential election Feb. 7--most of the time, decisions went his way.

Four Vacancies

Now, President Corazon Aquino, in one of her first statements after declaring herself the winner of the Feb. 7 election, had called for all justices of the court to resign so she can either replace or reappoint them. There are already four vacancies.

The resignation request was unusual but not unprecedented. In 1982, all the justices offered their resignations to President Marcos after several of them were implicated in a scheme to change the bar examination grades of the son of Justice Vicente G. Ericta.

Much depends on whether the Aquino government, which came to power after a nearly bloodless revolution, is to be considered a constitutional government or a revolutionary government.

Under the constitution, Aquino cannot force the justices to resign. They may serve until reaching the age of 70.

Revolutionary Approach

With a revolutionary government, she could, of course, dismiss them all. Ministers in the Aquino Cabinet are wrestling with this distinction, and the minister of justice, former law professor Neptali Gonzales, favors the revolutionary approach.

Whatever the outcome of the debate, it seems almost certain that:

--Some of the justices will go. “I think we have the goods on a lot of these people,” the chief presidential spokesman, Rene Saguisag, told a reporter Friday. “If we confront them and say, ‘Resign or we’ll throw the book at you,’ I think they may go.”

--Claudio Teehankee, 67, often a lonely voice of dissent in recent years, will almost certainly be spared. In fact, he is often mentioned as a likely choice for chief justice.

In his chambers, Teehankee sipped a chilled French wine Friday and smiled. “This is a special occasion for us,” he said, lifting his glass in a toast. “We are feeling ebullient.”

Turned Against Marcos

Teehankee was once a Marcos favorite. “I served him well,” Teehankee said. But he turned against Marcos when Marcos declared martial law in 1972, an act Teehankee said was based on “a web of falsehoods and lies.”

Since then, Teehankee has won the admiration of Marcos opponents for the stand he has taken in several key cases. These include the arrest last May of three prominent civil rights attorneys in Davao and, more recently, a ruling that prevented the prosecution from introducing as evidence statements made by the former armed forces commander, Gen. Fabian C. Ver. He was charged with conspiracy in the assassination of opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., the new president’s husband.

In the Davao case, Teehankee and two other justices, Vicente Abad Santos and Hermogenes Concepcion Jr., argued that the military had taken the attorneys into custody for purely political reasons without a shred of evidence against them.

Key to Acquittal

In the Ver case, Teehankee was one of four justices who argued that the general’s testimony before a special investigative board preceding the trial should be allowed as evidence in the trial. The majority ruling, that the Ver testimony could not be admitted (because he had not been informed of his rights against self-incrimination) was the key factor in his acquittal.

The other justices who dissented were Santos; Ameurfina M. Herrera, the first woman on the court; and Lorenzo Relova, since retired.

Ironically, the present chief justice, Raymond C. Aquino (no kin to the president), officiated when Marcos was sworn in as president Tuesday. At almost the same time, Teehankee was swearing in Corazon Aquino in a separate ceremony.

“When I administered the oath to the president,” Teehankee said, “we were all aware that, in the eyes of Marcos, we were part of the rebellion.”

The pressure on the justices to resign is mounting. Former Justice B.L. Jose Reyes, 83 and one of the most respected lawyers in the Philippines, who was sitting with Teehankee in his office Friday, said: “The public thinks the justices just went along with whatever Marcos said. They will not be satisfied unless a number of them resign.”

Aquino aides say privately that they do not want a noisy confrontation with the justices. Besides Tehankee, she is almost sure to keep Santos and Herrera. Teehankee, because of his favored position with Aquino, is negotiating with the other justices in the hope of getting the same mass resignation that followed the bar exam scandal.

The Supreme Court was a special area for Marcos patronage. Five of the sitting justices, in fact, were friends of Marcos and with him, members of the 1939 class at the University of the Philippines School of Law.

“Five classmates,” Teehankee said with a smile as he looked into his wine. “This is one for Ripley.”

Congress is taking a new role in foreign policy. Page 22.