Judiciary: Find drastic ways to speed up cases

I have always maintained that corruption is endemic in this country solely because the wheels of Justice moves ever so slowly. In many cases, it moves if it’s “oiled” by grease money which many so-called “Rogues in Robes” continue to do. This is why if there is any flicker of hope that has been ushered throughout the land with the election of Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III it is that he has used “corruption” as his means to eradicate poverty. Believing that his political slogan isn’t merely playing lip service to what ails our nation we can only hope that he would succeed in this.

When we were students in Law school, we were repeatedly bombarded by our law professors that legal dictum first spoken by 19th Century politician William Gladstone “Justicia Cuntator est Justitica Denego or Justice delay is Justice denied.” When he was still alive, the late Chief Justice and later Senate President Marcelo “Noy Celing” Fernan came up with a law to speed up the trials in our courts. But somehow, despite all his earnest efforts, Justice today continues to be denied, especially to the poor.

For as long as our courts of law continue to be clogged with so many cases and are not given any special attention to unclog them, it will be next to impossible for Justice to speed up, unless the Judiciary does something very drastic. This is what needs to be done. But so far, whenever we get a new Chief Justice, he merely does what the other Chief Justices have done in the past and not find ways to solve the very clogged courts.

There are hundreds of thousands of cases of estafa, wherein people sue other people for not paying the money that are due to them. In one instance, I heard a Judge declare in frustration, “You are making this court your personal collection agency!” I quite agree with the observation of that Judge (sorry, if I do not mention the name of the Judge) that there are just too many such cases languishing in our courts.

Perhaps the Judiciary ought to come up with a special branch just on monetary claims so that when a complaint is lodged in court, it will automatically go to that court and the Judge assigned to this new branch can easily determine who is at fault. What we need is for the Judiciary under the new Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona to think out of the box and come up with novel ideas to speed up our snail’s paced Justice System.

Finally, let me point to the resolution by the Office of the Ombudsman on the “Black Suede scandal” that happened right after New Year more than two years ago. While the Office of the Ombudsman has suspended five doctors and a nurse on this case. This incident wouldn’t have happened if that gay man did not insert a spray can into the rectum of the other fellow. In other countries, they have laws against sodomy. This act was an evil act that is worse than sodomy.

But as it is, our Justice system failed (although, this case was miraculous in its speedy resolution) because it never went into the bottom of the case, that made the doctors take photographs of the inserted can for their future studies.The Office of the Ombudsman should have suspended only the person who uploaded this on YouTube. But then, the officers of the Ombudsman merely wanted to show that they can suspend doctors and do it in a speedy manner, regardless of the consequences to the families of those medical practitioners.

Still on the Judiciary, we read the news that finally the Supreme Court has ruled last May 20 that Sugar lands are covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Naturally, this issue brings us back to the still unresolved issue of the Hacienda Luisita which was among the petitioners in this case. What will happen to the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) issued by the court on June 2006 stopping the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) from nullifying the so-called Stock Distribution Option (SDO) which was made into law in the old CARP law?

Pundits are saying that this is the very reason why Sen. Noynoy Aquino refuses to recognize the appointment of Chief Justice Corona because he insists on appointing his own Chief Justice so that this case could be reversed, more so that he will soon by proclaimed as President. There is no doubt that this issue will haunt President-elect Noynoy Aquino even before he gets proclaimed or takes his oath as President. If he truly wants to show his magnanimity, he can abide by this latest ruling by the Supreme Court and agree to the distribution of Hacienda Luisita, which he promised to do anyway. This issue will be a huge factor on the Aquino Presidency. Whether he will succeed or fail will depend on how Noynoy Aquino decides on this latest SC decision.

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