Justice delayed

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Justice delayed
Sunday, 10 19, 2003

We all know how the rest of the expression goes. In this case, however, we’d like to apply the timeworn adage to our judges and court personnel, to whom justice has been a long time coming. The sooner Sen. Kiko Pangilinan realizes this, the better it will be for him and the judges and court personnel whose benefits and privileges Senators Sonny Osmeña and Ed Angara have been fighting for. If Pangilinan sticks to his version, the bicameral conference committee report on the disagreeing provisions of Senate Bill 2018 and House Bill 5178 increasing the benefits for judges and court personnel will languish in plenary, awaiting approval, which will probably never come in the life of the 12th Congress which ends in December.

Osmeña sums it all up in his full-page ads: The truth of the matter is that pride stands in the way of an early approval (of the bill). Returning the bill to the bicameral conference committee is the solution, but this is offensive to the misplaced self-esteem of some senators.

At the heart of the stalemate over the bill are Osmeña’s insistence on the sourcing of the funds for the increase in allowances of judges from the Judiciary Development Fund, and Angara’s determined effort to include the court personnel as beneficiaries of the allowances. Their request is simple: Bring back the matter to the bicameral conference committee, and revisit the concerns of Osmeña and Angara. Within a week’s time in the committee, somehow a solution and a compromise will be arrived at, which the two chambers of Congress can ratify.

It is Pangilinan’s intransigence from the very start that has delayed the approval of the bill. One recalls the long months during which he went through the wringer of interpellations, just because he insisted on his version rather than the substitute for which Angara and the rest of the senators in the minority have been batting. With the compromise version already submitted for ratification, he has been standing his ground for five session days over a span of six weeks, insisting rather on his version and trying hard to fend off a recommitment of the bill to a bicameral conference committee. To many observers of the legislative process, Pangilinan could very well have agreed to a recommitment at the first sign of opposition on Sept. 8 when the report was submitted, so that by now the bill would already have been enacted into law.

Which brings us to the need for the lobbying judges and court personnel to convince and persuade Pangilinan to agree now to a recommitment of the bill, if they want to enjoy the new benefits without delay.

Judge Romeo Barza of the Makati City Regional Trial Court, who has been working hard in behalf of his colleagues for the enactment of the law rationalizing the compensation and benefits system for judges, should explain to Pangilinan that the latter’s bull-headedness might as well be an overt denial to the judges and court personnel of the benefits due them.

Barza knows whereof he speaks, having been a long-time practising lawyer and, later, judge in Battings, where he learned that compromises make things move faster. He feels that the judges and court personnel need not be made to suffer any longer from the delay in the approval of the bill.

Barza sees merit in Angara’s effort to include court personnel as beneficiaries of the new allowances. Why, indeed, should court personnel be excluded, when they are the vital cogs that help drive the judicial mill? Barza says a judge cannot function well in the face of a corps of disgruntled court personnel. He wholeheartedly agrees with Osmeña that judges must espouse the cause of those on whom the efficiency of their courts depend.

The session days left in the calendar of Congress are dwindling to a precious few. Pangilinan should now to shift the venue of debates back to the bicameral conference committee, or heed the solomonic solution of Senate President Frank Drilon who has proposed the filing of two separate bills to address the concerns of Osmeña. If he has the welfare of the judges and court personnel at heart, Pangilinan should realize that the committee holds the key to the present impasse. He doesn’t even have to worry about the bruised ego; surely, he will get the credit.

Barza, who is gunning for the presidency of the Philippine Judges’ Association, has gone around the country, visiting the various trial courts, and has a report which he will submit to the judges during their national convention next week. The report, prepared by Judge Vicky Paredes of Caloocan City, pictures a judiciary that is in dire need of help in terms of budget, an employer that cannot seem to attract any to enlist in its roll of honorables (on account of starvation wages and subhuman working conditions in some offices), and court personnel who function in despair over the seeming lack of concern for their welfare. (Court stenographers receive only a monthly salary of about P8,000, while their counterparts in the Senate receive well over P20,000 per month, on top of monthly bonuses and air-conditioned working places). Barza promises to address these problems, however modest such solutions may be, should he be chosen as the worthy successor to the indefatigable and overachieving president of the PJA, Judge Marino de la Cruz of Manila.

We congratulate Judge Pol Bruselas of Quezon City, my classmate many years ago, for a well-deserved recognition from his peers in the judiciary. Pol received last week the Award for Judicial Excellence.


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