E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Justice on the block
Sunday, 08 03, 2008
The scandal — that’s what it is, buddy, and let’s not be euphemistic about it — that now engulfs the Judiciary over the case at the Court of Appeals (CA) between the Government Service Insurance System and the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) has uncloaked a dark, transactional periphery of the justice system.
CA Justice Jose Sabio claims he was offered P10 million in exchange for his inhibition from the case, to guarantee Meralco’s winning the case. The purported transaction agent of the Justice’s (dis)services, businessman Francis de Borja, bristles at the claim. He says it was the honorable Justice who gently but unmistakably laced their coffee-shop banter with a comment that went something like this: For P50 million, I will decide the case the way you want me to.
Whichever version is to be believed, it looks and smells like the Judiciary is still littered with the nauseous filth and dirt of corruption, despite the Herculean efforts of Chief Justice Reynato Puno to rid this Augean stable of the bulls in robes (the judges) and the bullshitters in barongs (the lawyers).
I mentioned yesterday in my column the travails of columnist Jake Macasaet, who was simply telling the truth about a fictitious payee of a check for P2 million supposedly for “PR for the Supreme Court.” It turns out that a lawyer was instrumental in substituting his name for the fictitious payee, pocketed the entire swag for himself, but made it appear that it was to be used as bribe to secure a favorable court decision.
Thankfully, it was established after investigation that no one from the Court was involved, and no money ever reached anyone in the Court. Now the lawyer is neck-deep in shit creek: the Court established that in the circumstances surrounding the preparation and encashment of the check and the ultimate beneficiaries of its proceeds, the lawyer was “lying through his teeth.” He now faces the cold comforts of being cited next by the Court for indirect contempt, or facing another disbarment complaint, or being cited as a respondent for violation of the law on estafa.
And take the case of this lawyer being investigated for a similar charge before the Sandiganbayan. His name is also connected to millions of pesos supposedly intended for “PR” for that court, in exchange for the issuance of a temporary restraining order. The facts established by the Supreme Court in its resolution of July 22, 2008 in the other case, very well establishes the modus operandi of lawyers who appear to have perfected the art of stuffing their own pockets with money intended for “PR.”
The lawyer has come a long way, whenever Lady Justice is looking the other way.
But sometimes money ain’t just enough.
A lawyer had the gumption and the temerity of erasing the name of a nominee in a party-list organization’s Certificate of Nomination, and then substituting his own name. Then he asked to be proclaimed and take his seat at the House of Representatives. The party-list organization was quick enough to discover the lawyer’s duplicity, and contested his petition to be proclaimed.
Insiders at the Commission on Elections were talking about how the lawyer would again use the persuasive power of his PR boodle to buy a decision favorable to him. Didn’t work this time — the Comelec declared that the lawyer had in fact substituted his name. The last time I heard, the legal beagle was facing a disbarment complaint filed by the party-list organization.
If the revelations in the Senate investigation into the Swine Fund Scam are to be believed, even non-lawyers are now getting gargantuan attorney’s fees.
How does one justify the payment of P14 million in attorney’s fees for a transaction between two government agencies, a transaction that uses form documents and does not even need a lawyer for its execution?
Cito Beltran of The Philippine Star has this very insightful comment: “We certainly need to shoot any bribe giver who would dare to approach the bench or the men and women of the court, believing our judges and justices can be paid and bought like prostitutes or a pound of pork at the meat market. In like manner, we need to rattle Congress and the Supreme Court to awaken them to realizing that in their failure to work together they have inadvertently robbed the people of Justice for all.”
By all means, let’s all shoot the bribe givers - in their knuckles and kneecaps -and let them live out this shame for the rest of their lives.
Bribery is the scourge of the Judiciary. The sooner we get rid of lawyers and non-lawyers who lock in their money or their client’s in exchange for their own brand of instant commercialized justice, the better it is for all of us who must stand and wait and not get justice at all.
The Integrated Bar of the Philippines needs to clear up the dockets of its Commission on Bar Discipline (IBP). Many cases have been pending for many years now. For instance, a lawyer has been charged many times over for the same nature of grave misconduct by different complainants. He got a mere rap on the knuckle (only suspension for three months) in one case, and the other cases against him have yet to be resolved. How many more disbarment complaints will have to be filed against this lawyer before the IBP realizes that it must resolve the pending cases against the lawyer, lest a desperate complainant goes out of his head and heed Cito Beltran’s advice to shoot the lawyer?
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