MANILA — The preventive suspension imposed on Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Arthur Carandang was an affront to the Supreme Court, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Office of the President on Tuesday issued a 90-day preventive suspension order against Carandang for allegedly disclosing the alleged bank accounts of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.
The President’s bank accounts are the subject of an investigation being conducted by the Ombudsman.
In a statement on Wednesday, Morales said the recent spate of events posed a great cause for concern.
“With the institutional significance and national interest involved, the Ombudsman is constrained to now state her position on the matter,” Morales said.
“Like any government official, the Ombudsman has sworn to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the land,” she stressed.
“The Ombudsman will thus not allow herself to betray her sworn duty to uphold the Constitution by recognizing what is patently unconstitutional as ordained by the Supreme Court en banc in Gonzales III v. Office of the President (G.R. No. 196231, 28 January 2014),” she added.
Morales cited that in the case of “Gonzales III,” the Supreme Court categorically declared unconstitutional the administrative disciplinary jurisdiction of the President over deputy ombudsmen.
“The Ombudsman cannot, therefore, seriously place at risk the independence of the very Office, which she has pledged to protect on the strength of the constitutional guarantees, which the High Court has upheld,” Morales said.
“It has become clear that the act of the Office of the President in taking cognizance of the complaints against the Overall Deputy Ombudsman and ordering his preventive suspension was not an inadvertent error but a clear affront to the Supreme Court and an impairment of the constitutionally enshrined independence of the Office of the Ombudsman,” Morales said.
“In a society founded on the rule of law, the arbitrary disregard of a clearly worded jurisprudence coupled with a confident stance that it will be changed should never be countenanced,” the Ombudsman expounded. (Perfecto Raymundo, Jr./PNA)
