Selective judiciary austerity, or plain iniquity?

About a year ago today, a constitutional gridlock nearly occurred following the impeachment of the chief justice by the young Turks of the NPC faction of the Lower House.

What triggered it was the alleged illegal over-spending of the Judiciary Development Fund (JDF) from which court employees have been drawing their varied allowances.

However, the proximate cause could have been their discontent over their exclusion from RA 7229 increasing the magistrates' allowances by 100 percent over their basic pay, despite prior assurances of inclusion.

Moral lesson: When the disgruntled rank and file opts to call on lawmakers to redress their grievances, even the SC isn't immune from trouble, its lofty perch notwithstanding.

All court employees have material stakes in the JDF over which they jealously and zealously keep a watchful eye. It's their only fallback income to augment their meager salaries. They used to enjoy varied allowances, including the 13th and 14th months bonanza. Almost all-year round, their JDF manna would tide over their financial straits.

Lately, these allowances have been reduced, though remitted monthly.

Meantime, judges have received the 25 percent trunch of RA 7229, staggered over four years until the 100 percent increase shall have been reached. Aside from that, the magistrates also receive RATA, extraordinary allowance, and the JDF allowance, totaling hefty sums.

What disgruntles the rank and file is the much wider disparity between their income and that of the judge, worsened by reducing their JDF. They don't begrudge the judges for their mental work, pressure, and awesome responsibility that deserve liberal compensation. However, the judge is helpless without the indispensable roles of the full court.

The branch clerk of court, for example, is the court's workhorse in administrative aspects. Besides, some magistrates entrust their branch clerks with such functions as decision-making, and/or its factual or evidentiary recitals and the law and jurisprudence involved, or to receive ex-parte evidence and prepares orders or resolutions, among others.

Likewise, researchers, interpreters, stenographers, staff assistants, process servers, etc. are vital personnel who deserve recognition and adequate compensation, at least from the JDF.

The JDF relied upon by the RTC, Metro, City, and Municipal courts nationwide, is also the milking cow for other monetary grants. Drawn from the JDF for decades now are special privileges of monthly grocery and rice allocations, purportedly only enjoyed by SC and CA personnel; thus, leaving only the crumbs for the former.

The poor "promdi" court staff has for decades endured such ill-treatment as if they have no need for grocery and rice. In fact, a cruel joke runs in Cebuano: "Maayo kono kita kay daghang abogadong kaparaygan". This smacks of possible illicit solicitations.

Thus, when the SC issued Adm. Circular 18-2005 on judiciary austerity, banning overtime service with pay, the trial court's staff frowned on such advice. Adding insult to injury from discrimination in terms of benefits, they further decry their being the judiciary's "lowest citizens". The official drivers of the SC and CA who are exempt from the said overtime austerity circular, are even better treated.

Isn't it ironic and a slap in the face that the judiciary as the Mt. Olympus of justice, fairness and equity, falls short from such norms by applying them with rank discrimination?