BOC chief seeks dismissal of ’Gapo judge

Bureau of Customs Commissioner Napoleon Morales has filed recently administrative charges with the Supreme Court against an Olongapo City Regional Trial Court judge who earlier stopped the implementation of an order replacing Collector Andres Salvacion Jr. at the Port of Subic (POS), it was learned yesterday.

In his complaint, Morales said Olongapo RTC Branch 74 Judge Ramon Caguioa should be dismissed from judicial service for "gross ignorance of the law, manifest partiality and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service and proper administration of justice" when he issued a writ of preliminary injunction stopping the order of the Customs chief reassigning Salvacion from POS to the Port of Cagayan de Oro.

Citing as bases the 1997 Rules of Civil Procedure and various other rulings of the SC, the BOC chief said the judge had no authority to entertain the petition for mandamus filed by Salvacion and issue the injunction order simply because the case was outside the territorial jurisdiction of his court. Morales argued the case should be handled by a court in Manila where his office is located and where he had issued the order of transfer.

Morales’ also cited a precedent where the SC had suspended a judge in Marawi City in Cebu for not knowing the limits of his territorial jurisdiction.

Morales said that the petition initiated by Salvacion was premature and should have been brought first to the Civil Service Commission, which has exclusive jurisdiction over personnel actions such as transfer, reassignment or promotion which affect employees in the civil service. This legal process known as "exhaustion of administrative remedies" was ignored by Caguioa, added the BOC chief.

The Customs chief believes the RTC judge had no legal authority to interfere with his prerogative vested in him by the Tariff and Customs Code of the Philippines to transfer or reassign Customs personnel as public service may demand.

The SC had declared that government employees, whose appointments are not station specific, may be reassigned from one organization unit to another in the same agency where, in the opinion of the agency head, their services may be used more effectively. As such, these employees can neither claim a vested right to the unit or station to which they were assigned nor to security of tenure thereat.

Morales further argued that the writ of preliminary injunction order should not have been issued because the petition of Salvacion had already become moot and academic with the assumption to office of the new appointed POS collector, Marietta Zamoranos.