Judiciary included in cry for transparency

I’d be first to say that, even in the face of adversity, Supreme Court Justice Santiago Kapunan is a caballero. He prefaced his rejoinder yesterday to my piece "Uninhibited justices can inhibit justice" with the line, "I appreciate Mr. Bondoc’s concerns that led him to write his column about me." It shows his understanding of the stirring times we’re in.

Such stirring times demand vigilance of everyone, to be inquisitive at the very least. It requires even the reluctant to join in reforms for the greater good. For, recent events have disrupted the nation and rocked institutions:

A President elected by the widest margin ever was exposed to have pocketed money from jueteng syndicates and for taxes, and stashed it in an alias bank account or used it to build a dozen or so mansions. A Congress tasked to check and balance the executive branch had to be prodded to do its job. A Senate that eventually tried the impeached President voted to trash the evidence on the bank account. A national police tasked to protect high officials wiretapped their conversations. An ensuing People Power Revolt had to be supported later by the military for a decisive outcome. A Supreme Court had to declare the finality of the President’s resignation, and the constitutionality of the successor. A vibrant press then recorded the other misdeeds of cronies and appointees of the disgraced President – in the SSS and GSIS, in favored companies, in government banks.

Through it all, the people got huge doses of information, at first confusing but ultimately enlightening. But as if to muddle it, forces bent on resisting change incited the urban-poor, partly through drugs and partly with legitimate grievances, to attack Malacanang. The plotting goes on to this day, although they know an ocean separates plotting from executing.

Much of the information was revolting, to say the least. Bits and peices continue to unfold in the press, in the Senate, and in the courts: drug trafficking, kidnapping, murder by high officials and uniformed cohorts. On top of these, laments by feuding high officials that the courts can be bought by such heinous criminals. All too much for one lifetime to absorb, so much so that leaders of reforms themselves lament, when will this all end? Hopefully they have not lost sight of the objective to repair the moral fiber of the nation.

The swiftness of reforms depends on the faithfulness of high officials to the truth, and the ability of the public to discern it. This would mean questioning, probably even discarding, traditions that are incongruous with the demand for more transparency and accountability in government.

The Supreme Court is not exempt from such questioning arising from these stirring times, much to the discomfort perhaps of some justices. Deliberations conducted behind closed doors during which, as Justice Kapunan says, a justice "expresses his innermost thoughts and deepest convictions in order to convince the others that his are the most fair, just and judicious" will have to somehow quench the public thirst for answers not just in written decisions but also in actions and associations of justices themselves. For, whom they associate with can influence their actions.

This means the judiciary will have to be more open and not limit its workings to lawyers. This means that the public and the press would have to express certain suspicions of conflict of interest or miscarriage of justice, and be free to ask if a justice should recuse from a case.

Change is difficult yet inevitable. The ultimate issue is perhaps in adapting to it. For it is everywhere and affects all even if unnoticed.

Justice Kapunan’s appreciation of my concerns perhaps also shows his openness to change in the highest tribunal. It’s just too bad that a lawyer of Joseph Estrada could not express the same appreciation. Instead, he rose too quickly in the justice’s defense by pointing to a "conspiracy to destroy the Supreme Court as an institution." He ranted about the leak of a majority decision on Estrada’s plunder case that Kapunan supposedly has written. What majority decision? I thought all along that ponente can refer to either the majority or dissenting opinion. I wonder now if the lawyer knows about something that I never mentioned in my column.

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That piece also prompted a rejoinder from Court of Appeals Justice Wenceslao Agnir, which I’m running in full for fair play:

May I set the record straight about certain statements concerning me made by Mr. Jarius Bondoc in his column in The STAR issue of September 15, 2001.

1. Mr. Bondoc said that I was a newly-appointed judge when I handled the Kuratong Baleleng case in March 1999, insinuating that I was a neophyte judge who did not know how to handle a big case. The truth is I was appointed to the judiciary in January 1990 with station at RTC Laoag City and transferred to RTC Quezon City in July 1995. Thus, by March 1999, I was already a seasoned trial judge, if I may be permitted to sound immodest.

2. It is not true that the wife of Senator Lacson was my secretary during the time I worked in a bank. In the late ’60s through the ’70s, Alice de Perio and I worked for the same bank but she was a teller in a branch office until she resigned, except for a very brief stint in the personnel department whose manager was one of the executives reporting to me. Almost everyone in the bank at that time knew Alice because she was a popular commercial model. But she was never at any time my secretary and, in fact, I did not know until much later that she had in the meantime gotten married to then Capt. Lacson.

3. Mr. Bondoc implied that the dismissal of the Kuratong Baleleng case was irregular because the accused were not arraigned and tried. What happened was that during the hearing on the motions for judicial determination of the existence of probable cause for the issuance of warrants of arrest, the prosecution manifested that it had no more evidence in view of the recantation of the affidavits of the principal witnesses. In the case of Allado vs. Diokno (232 SCRA 190), the Supreme Court held that if the judge finds no probable cause to issue a warrant of arrest, he can dismiss the case right there and then, i.e., before arraignment and without trial, as "there is no reason to hold the accused for trial and further expose him to an open and public accusation of the crime when no probable cause exists."

4. Yes, two months after I dismissed the case, I was appointed to the Court of Appeals upon recommendation of the Judicial and Bar Council headed by the Chief Justice, but isn’t this proof that my action on the Kuratong Baleleng case was above board?

Thank you for publishing this letter.

My pleasure, Sir. For, that’s what I meant when I said the press must be free to ask questions of justices who, as high officials, can transparently answer in the search for truth. Lawyers and laymen alike said my piece stirred a hornet’s nest. Part of my job.

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