The judiciary in crisis

Sen. Panfilo Lacson will emerge from seclusion and drop the third and final part of his "Jose Pidal" bombshell at 3 this afternoon, according to his handlers. This time the exposé will include "Mrs. Pidal" – whoever she may be.

As usual we will all be transfixed by this show, and as usual we will believe the worst that will be said of Mr. and Mrs. Jose Pidal.

Once the show is over, what do we do?

We wait for the next scandal to come along.

As for the Pidal couple, formal charges may be filed, but no one is expecting a speedy outcome from the courts. By the time a final verdict is handed down, we would have mostly forgotten the case.

We tolerate the use and abuse of the privileged speech precisely because of our impatience with the courts. In the halls of Congress, we can witness an indictment, trial and conviction in record time, even when stretched to a three-part series.

People don’t trust prosecutors and judges, and now there are efforts to undermine public trust in the Supreme Court itself. Not even Imelda Marcos’ umbrella man, former Chief Justice Enrique Fernando, was subjected to an impeachment complaint.

Unless we intend to complete our descent into chaos, we have to reverse this trend. We need the rule of law to strengthen our institutions and build a strong republic. But how can there be rule of law when we can’t trust even the Supreme Court?

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The reactions to the re-raffle of the Kuratong Baleleng case at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court were hardly encouraging. The Lacson camp was happy; the government side obviously was not. This indicated that both sides were fishing for a "friendly" judge to handle the controversial case.

This in turn did not speak well of the independence of members of the judiciary. We speak of patronage politics. What about patronage in the judiciary?

The patronage starts early. Don’t think you can simply file an application to become a prosecutor or judge and get an appointment based on merit, even if the nation has an acute lack of fiscals and judges. You need a padrino, a patron; several will be better. An influential politician, a sympathetic justice — anyone who can get an appointment paper signed. Such endorsements do not come free. Debts of gratitude are inevitably incurred along the rocky path to a successful career in the judiciary.

Obviously, the higher you go, the more powerful the backer needed. In the case of the Supreme Court, appointees are often known personally by the President herself and are her handpicked choices.

In an environment poisoned by politics, the poison inevitably spreads to the judiciary.

Thus people see politics not only in the Kuratong ruling of the Supreme Court, but also in the Sandiganbayan’s lifting of the sequestration order on Eduardo Cojuangco’s shares in San Miguel Corp. The sequestration was lifted based on a technical lapse on the part of the Presidential Commission on Good Government. Now how did everyone miss that minor detail all these years?

There is always the possibility, of course, that both rulings were nothing but manifestations of due process taking its course. Cojuangco may still announce this week his candidacy for president, belying speculation that he struck a deal with Malacañang in exchange for the favorable ruling on his SMC shares.

In both the Kuratong and SMC rulings, however, you can’t blame people for saying that the timing stinks, and for smelling conspiracies.

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It’s not just the independence of the judiciary that is often in doubt, but the integrity of its members. The terms "fix-cals" and "hoodlums in robes" are no laughing matter. When we can joke so casually about people who are tasked to uphold the majesty of the law, the nation is in deep trouble.

There is no lack of stories about prosecutors, judges, even justices accepting bribes for a ruling or a temporary restraining order. Among corrupt judges in the lower courts, the thinking is that even if a decision is legally flawed, it can still be corrected anyway in the higher courts. Only a few judges get punished for such flawed decisions.

You hear complaints about corruption in the judiciary from local businessmen, foreign investors and even an unusually vocal US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone. Cops complain that among the biggest hindrances to the campaign against drug trafficking are corrupt judges, who free drug dealers even when the accused are charged with a non-bailable offense.

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To be fair, there are members of the judiciary who are honest and competent, who stay out of politics, who are fully aware of the independence of the judiciary from the executive branch, and who try not to let debts of gratitude influence the administration of justice.

These people must deal with low remuneration, lousy workplaces, and the occasional threats arising from cases they are handling. These people are generally overworked, underpaid and stressed out. And still they get a lot of bad press due to the rotten eggs in their midst.

People don’t want to read about the good guys, of course. We remember mostly the bad, and we tend to believe the worst about members of the judiciary.

The talk going around is that the Kuratong Baleleng case has created deep divisions in the Supreme Court, and enough tension to make at least one frustrated justice go on leave.

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At least Lacson is going through the motions of abiding by the law, even as he cloaks himself once more with parliamentary immunity to rake the First Couple over the coals. With a judge perceived to be sympathetic to him getting the Kuratong case, Lacson and his two co-accused have asked for a deferment of the issuance of their arrest warrants.

Given the volatile political situation, those warrants may be deferred until after the elections in May. But then we will hear complaints about a senator getting preferential treatment from a biased court.

We will never have a strong republic if the standing joke about the judiciary is that in this country, it’s good to know the law, but it’s better to know the judge. Our judiciary is in crisis, and no one seems to have any idea how to deal with it.