Can Midas Marquez clean the judiciary?

The Supreme Court has assigned Court Administrator Jose Midas Marquez to investigate the “Napoles” equivalent in the judiciary. So this guy Marquez will take on the role of a Leila de Lima and Conchita Carpio-Morales and has pledged to clean up the judiciary.

There can be no rule of law unless there is an honest judiciary. For example, charging Enrile, Estrada and Revilla is done by the executive branch. But their conviction will depend on the judicial system.

But who is this Midas Marquez? Are we optimistic that he can really purge the judiciary of corruption and finally give us an honest and fair judicial process? And what is this Office of the Court Administrator that has been assigned this monumental task?

I have been mentioning this young man every time I write about judicial corruption. After all he is in charge of the mechanism for investigating judges and pursuing “appropriate” actions. In the Guidelines on the Functions of the Court Administrator, it states that among the “work attended to by the Office of the Court Administrator” is “ Judicial discipline of lower court justices, judges and personnel.”

Another provision states that the [Supreme] “Court thus acts through the Court Administrator in the exercise of its administrative functions.”

Marquez has a very interesting written profile, I have written this in a previous column. But I will repeat it here because of the newly publicized significance of Midas Marquez and his office.  It says:  “Supreme Court Justices in an unprecedented move, unanimously appointed him the youngest ever Court Administrator with the rank of Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeals.”

In another portion of the profile, it says: “ He {Midas Marquez} now has supervision over all 2,000 justices of the 3rd level courts and judges and 27,000 court personnel across the country, many of them twice his age.”

Since the position of the Court Administrator is so powerful, then Marquez should be prepared to assume full responsibility or credit for the state or level of corruption in the judiciary.

The only thing I personally know about Marquez is that he was the valiant defender and spokesman of impeached Justice Renato Corona. In fact, in a television interview a few months ago, he was still valiantly defending Corona.

But if Marquez is serious about his job, here are some suggestions from lawyer friends of mine.

It was fellow STAR columnist, Jarius Bondoc, who first broke the story about a Ma’m Arlene, the Napoles equivalent  in the Judiciary. This woman is said to be well known in the legal and judicial circles. But Marquez is quoted as saying he does not know the real identity of this “Ma’m Arlene.” My lawyer friends suggest he can begin his investigating by asking his staff, including his Deputy Administrator if they personally know this mysterious Arlene.

Another lawyer friend also suggested that the list of vacant salas should be made public such as in a web site. I tried to ask for a list from the office of the court administrator but I was told that I have to write a letter of request. Doesn’t this sound strange?

Again my lawyer friend said that when a court is vacant, then assisting judges can be appointed for specific cases. A permanent judge in another court can be appointed as a temporary assisting judge for a specific case as a “reward.” I am not a lawyer so I am not sure how being assigned to a case, like a land title case, can be a reward. Perhaps lawyers out there can enlighten me.

But I do plan to write a request and my purpose will simply be to publish the list so the public can be made aware.

In the meantime, I have been trying to get a list of all the pending administrative cases filed against judges that are still in the Office of the Court Administrator. I also cannot understand why charges against any citizen is made public but charges against judges are kept secret.

Is the purpose of all this secrecy supposedly to protect the dignity of judges because they could be the subject of nuisance cases? Then what about other officials and other citizens who are also victims of nuisance cases?

I maintain that it is the judiciary that should be held to the highest standards since they are the final arbiter of the law.

This cleansing process of the judicial system becomes imperative as the charges against major lawmakers are filed within the next few months. How will the judicial system deal with the charges filed  against Senators Enrile, Estrada and Revilla.? And what about other members of the HERMES group like Honasan, Marcos and Sotto?

Today we are truly at a crossroads. We can accept the arguments who say that everyone is corrupt and corruption is a part of our culture. Therefore, we should not punish those who have plundered this country because given a chance everyone will do so.

There are those who knowingly or unknowingly have made themselves tools of those who want to muddle the issues and want to push the issues of Napoles and the plunderers away from the public eye. There are even those, for their own political and ideological agenda or who simply want publicity, want to make P-Noy and not the corrupt officials of the past administration as propaganda targets.

Transforming Philippine society and institutionalizing the rule of law was never going to be an easy task. But we must never give up on this war on corruption.

I remain confident that this is a war that P-Noy will never give up on. After all, it was his father who once said the Filipino is worth dying for.

*      *      *

E-mail: [email protected]