Sereno open to private backing of judiciary projects

MANILA, Philippines — Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno said Thursday the Judiciary is open to financial support from the business community for projects to improve the efficiency of courts and to construct of much-needed courthouses.

Speaking before a forum by the Judicial Reform Initiative (JRI) in Makati City, Sereno said the business sector could help decongest court dockets such as its flagship "Hustisyeah!" project through funding.

The five-phased project targets to make an inventory of the cases of the participating courts, make a report of the case inventory, formulate a case decongestion plan which will have to be approved by the judges, implement the plan and make a final report of the results of the implementation.

Additional human resources and the use of a private courier service will be provided for the participating courts. The project has already successfully concluded its implementation in Quezon City, Makati City, and Angeles City.

“Hustisyeah! was launched in Quezon City. There was a 30-percent docket reduction. In order to continue this and further drive down the congestion so that each judge has no more than 300 cases, you must have Hustisyeah! continued," Sereno explained.

The USAID terminated the project in Quezon City and started implementing it in other areas.

"As the judges enjoyed the services of private couriers, they are now back to using the Philippine Postal Corporation with the corresponding delay of two months on any incident of anything having to be mailed. The risk of slippage when cynicism sets in is there," she said.

A case decongestion project, Hustisyeah! is implemented by the Supreme Court, in partnership with The Asia Foundation, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development through the American Bar Association.

"In this manner therefore, the private sector has immense flexibility that is not within my capability. You can help us with our house on fire measures, plug in where there are funding gaps, until we drive down the congestion rate to a manageable docket load," Sereno told members of the business community including those from the Makati Business Club, the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and the Management Association of the Philippines.

Sereno also said the country's business community could also help in the building of courthouses by exerting pressure on Congress to allow the high court to spearhead the construction.

"The second is support for the soft and hard infrastructure requirements of the judiciary. It must make sense that we must be able to build our courthouses but obviously the trust of the legislature in the Judiciary's capability to plan build its own has not yet ripened," she said.

"Many of you can make a persuasive argument that it is time to let the judiciary grow its own structures," the chief justice added.

It would be recalled that in his separate 13-page opinion on the government's appeal to the high court's ruling on the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) last month, Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio lashed at Congress' decision to give the Department of Justice (DOJ) the responsibility of building and maintaining the halls of justice or courthouses throughout the country.

Carpio said this violates the separation of powers between the executive branch and the judiciary.

"The inclusion of such an item in the DOJ budget clearly creates an anomaly where the judiciary will have to request the DOJ, an executive department, to construct a Hall of Justice for the judiciary," Carpio said in his opinion.

Sereno, meanwhile, stressed that should there be a partnership between the Judiciary and the business community, the court should be spared from looking at the partnership terms and from any conflict of interest.

"Judiciary cannot accept direct assistance from the business community. If there is going to be assistance, it should be designed in a way that it does not put us in a difficult situation," she explaned.

"But we are open of course to help that is given, so it is just designing the relationship between those who want to help and the institution. It needs a careful study," she added.