SC probe of Ma’am Arlene superior to three others

Three points about Tuesday’s devastating earthquake in Central Visayas:

• Local officials failed miserably in disaster management. TV news showed victims, two long days after calamity struck, trudging about dazed, famished, and unsheltered. Don’t mayors and governors pay heed to the geo-hazard maps of their locales? Or to the guidelines of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council? Printed by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, those maps pinpoint areas prone to floods, landslides, tsunamis, and temblors. NDRRMC directives include disaster and emergency drills.

• The MGB and the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology must make a 3-D seismic study of the archipelago. Tremor damage depends on the water content of the vicinity, American reader Paul Noel notes. Such study would, for one, tell where it is safe to build.

• Bohol’s thriving German community is helping in the relief and rehab, led by tireless, generous Herren Hans S., Brian G., and Wolf N. Needing rebuilding are the toppled centuries-old church steeples and facades in Baclayon, Loboc, Dawis, Maribojoc, Loon, and Loay towns. German reader Olaf C., of Makati and Limburg Tebartz-van Elst, wants his countrymen to stir their dioceses back home to help. Along with the island-province’s tarsiers and Chocolate Hills, the Spanish-era structures are world treasures.

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The Supreme Court’s special investigation of alleged Judiciary case fixer “Ma’am Arlene” is expected to subsume three other ongoing probes. SC Justice Marvic Leonen is to look into the corruption of subordinate magistrates via expensive gifts, parties, convention sponsorships and prizes. Two retired justices of his choice will assist him.

The SC en banc yesterday morning tasked Leonen to head its inquiry. As of this column’s submission, Leonen had yet to announce the two members and the guidelines of his special panel.

SC spokesman Theodore Te would not give details, lest he inadvertently pre-empt Leonen’s plans. He said it was up to the Justice whether to conduct hearings or merely coordinate the three other examinations. Leonen might seek en banc approval of his plans on Tuesday.

But the SC being the highest judicial body, its probe naturally is superior to that by its Office for Court Administration. As well, of the Court of Appeals and the National Bureau of Investigation.

Court Administrator Midas Marquez started investigating in Sept., when allegations circulated in the Internet about Ma’am Arlene. Purportedly the woman fixes cases for rich clients, in the Court of Appeals and lower courts in Metro Manila. As SC Court Admin, Marquez holds supervision over 2,000 justices and judges, and 25,000 court personnel nationwide. His scope is limited to possible criminal and administrative breaches in the Judiciary.

Marquez’s sleuthing in judicial circles turned up “at least three Ma’am Arlenes,” presently or previously connected to magistrates. He declined to give their surnames, pending fact-finding.

Marquez said one was a clerk at the Court of Appeals who supposedly sways some rulings involving big firms and amounts. In deference, he left the investigating of this Ma’am Arlene to CA Presiding Justice Andres B. Reyes Jr. Marquez as SC Court Admin is of lateral rank as CA boss Reyes. Reyes heads 81 appellate justices in 27 divisions in Metro Manila, Cebu, and Davao.

The second Ma’am Arlene has a slightly different spelling. Once a Malacañang aide, she reportedly influenced presidential picks of Judicial and Bar Council nominees. Marquez told The STAR Wednesday that from inquiries and personal knowledge, this Ma’am Arlene no longer is involved in Judiciary matters.

Marquez said he had met the third Ma’am Arlene years ago. The woman was raffling off gift checks of department stores or hotel bistros, in P2,000-denominations, donated by a Metro Manila vice mayor. Marquez said her name resurfaced in the run-up to the heated presidential election last week of the Philippine Judges Association.

(I too was informed of this Ma’am Arlene about two years back, but was thrown off because she was mentioned as “Ma’am Marlene.” The surname is unforgettable, though, because the same as my great grandma’s. Ma’am Arlene was the table talk among several metropolitan judges who attended a recent event in Cebu City.)

Pseudonymous articles sprang from the Net linking the third Ma’am Arlene to one of the three presidential contenders, regional trial court Judges Ralph Lee (Quezon City), Rommel Baybay (Makati), and Felix Reyes (Marikina). On Marquez’s orders, the three submitted to him their stands on the reported cheating, extravagant spending, and the intervention of Ma’am Arlene. A week before Election Day, Marquez had issued guidelines to cool down the leadership contest. He linked some of the anti-Ma’am Arlene items to a Manila port operator who has lost a case four times in escalating courts.

Marquez focused his probe on this Ma’am Arlene, but said it was limited to possible misconduct by the PJA candidates. The day before the SC en banc, he told The STAR that he and his three deputies were preparing to conduct closed-door hearings. They were to look into both ethical and administrative breaches. The three presidential contenders, Ma’am Arlene, and other persons were to be called in.

Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno this week requested the NBI, through Justice Sec. Leila de Lima, to conduct a separate probe. This came in the wake of reports that Ma’am Arlene’s influence extended to investigators and prosecutors of the Dept. of Justice and the Office of the Ombudsman.

The NBI probe is to include Ma’am Arlene’s possible criminal liabilities. It was not clear if CJ Sereno’s act was also to spare Marquez from any more press insinuations of bias. This, because two of the three Ma’am Arlenes have connections to two former Marquez deputies.

As the constitutional anti-corruption body, the Ombudsman is to conduct a separate lifestyle check of magistrates.

Ma’am Arlene has been branded “the Judiciary’s Napoles.” This is in relation to recent exposés of P10-billion plunder of pork barrels by senators and congressmen through fake NGOs of fixer Janet Lim Napoles. Aside from fronting for the lawmakers, Napoles supposedly bankrolled their birthday parties and family junkets overseas.

Photos of Napoles and family have been circulating in the Net. So with Ma’am Arlene, with members of the Judiciary. In the PJA’s 2012 convention in Bacolod, Ma’am Arlene, though not a Judiciary member, was at one point seated at the head table. Sereno later arrived to address the attendees.

The exposure of Ma’am Arlene has prompted comments that, given the 26 letters of the alphabet, there can be more Judiciary fixers than just three with names beginning with “A”. This in turn has spurred calls for a shakeup in that branch of government.

Filipinos know their politicians — in the Executive and Legislature — to be corrupt. They hold the Judiciary in higher regard, and expect justices and judges to be fair and clean. Last year Renato Corona was ousted as Chief Justice for, among others, undeclared multimillion-dollar deposits and posh condos.

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