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CHIEF
Justice Reynato Puno has managed to keep politics out of
the Judiciary’s business despite making bold actions and
strong pronouncements on various issues like the rampaging
extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in the
country, the need to protect the integrity of the election
process and the measly budget allotted to the Judiciary.
Even the
Alternative Law Groups (ALG), a watchdog of the Judiciary,
believes that the Puno Court has taken brave steps that
thrust the Judiciary to the forefront of human-rights
protection—this, while maintaining the court’s arms-length
treatment of everybody else.
“Instead
of maintaining its traditional passive role of waiting for
cases to be filed before taking any concrete action, the
Supreme Court has taken a more active role, like providing
new remedies for rights violations, like the writ of
amparo,” lawyer Marlon Manuel, spokesman of the ALG, said.
Having
easily gained the trust, confidence and respect of the
people, even the members of the Executive and Legislative
branches in his first year at the helm of the Philippine
Judiciary, Puno has been handpicked by some groups calling
for the ouster of President Arroyo to head a caretaker
government.
As
expected, Puno readily turned down the offer with the
simple argument that “the Judiciary should always be above
politics.”
However,
Puno explained that going beyond interpreting the law to
protect human rights from abuses is not politicking; it is
about fulfilling a constitutional mandate under the 1987
Constitution, to promulgate rules to enforce
constitutional rights.
Under his
watch, the Judiciary was successfully turned around from a
passive into an activist court, refusing to watch
helplessly from the sidelines while the number of
extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances
increased the past few years.
“They can
criticize the Judiciary with real and imagined complaints,
but they cannot charge it with inertness, with paralysis
and with amnesia in protecting the constitutional rights
of our people,” Puno has said.
The Puno
Court falls exactly within the definition of judicial
activism—“it is when courts do not confine themselves to
reasonable interpretations of laws, but instead create
law.”
In defense
of the Judiciary’s activism
The
problem of unabated extralegal killings and enforced
disappearances, compounded by the government’s failure to
deal with it decisively had reaped criticism from
human-rights advocates here and abroad. This,
notwithstanding President Arroyo’s argument that her move
to create the Melo Commission, among others, signaled an
intent to take the bull by its horns, so to speak.
Among
those who criticized the government for its failure to
substantially address the problem was United Nations
Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) Special Rapporteur on
Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions Philip
Alston. In his report after a nine-day trip to the
country, Professor Alston even directly linked the
military to some of the political killings, and urged the
government to do something about this.
Puno,
likewise, bluntly admitted that human rights under the
Arroyo government are “under assault.” He noted that
political branches of the government have failed to
address the problem of human-rights abuses as this could
entail making unpopular decisions.
“Elected
officials usually go for what is popular, but the
vindication of human rights sometimes demands taking
unpopular decisions especially in instances, where due to
technicalities, the right of the righteous is trumped by
the rights of the wicked,” Puno said in defense of the
Judiciary’s decision to take the main role in the fight
against human-rights abuses.
He noted
that elected officials are sometimes reluctant to make
decisions that will displease their powerful
constituencies. They are also sometimes more interested in
high-profile issues or those with great impact on the
larger number of their constituents.
“Oftentimes, however, human-rights cases are low profile
especially when they affect the marginalized, or people
whose existence some would hardly recognize or worse,
people dismissed as the invisibles of society,” the chief
justice explained.
Thus,
declared Mr. Puno, the Judiciary cannot just watch idly as
more and more people, including journalists, are subjected
to extralegal killings.
He
stressed that the Constitution has empowered the Supreme
Court, through the grant of an expanded rule-making power,
to put an end to this and similar problems.
“We
cannot, nor do we wish, to wash our hands of the
responsibility of putting an end to extralegal killings,
[no matter] how easy it is to lay the blame on another
branch of government. We cannot in good conscience use
the passive excuse that we are only empowered to decide
cases brought to us by the prosecution,” the Chief Justice
said.
Crafting
the rules on the writ of amparo
Using this
expanded rule-making power, Puno, in an unprecedented
move, gathered in July last year at least 400
representatives from all sectors of society, the Executive
and Legislative departments, the Armed Forces and the
National Police, the Commission on Human Rights, academe,
civil society for the two-day “National Consultative
Summit on Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced
Disappearances: Searching for Solutions” at the Manila
Hotel.
The summit
was aimed at searching for holistic solutions and
providing inputs to the Supreme Court in its objective of
enhancing existing rules, or promulgating new ones, in the
protection and enforcement of constitutional rights,
including the protection of witnesses.
While
government authorities and human-rights groups debated the
actual number of victims of extrajudicial killings and
enforced disappearances, Puno quickly described the
statistics as “chilling.”
The summit
participants agreed that the writ of habeas corpus as a
remedy for relatives of the missing persons has become
insufficient and ineffective. Respondents in the petition
for writ of habeas corpus can simply deny knowledge, if
not actual custody, of the missing person, which
oftentimes lead to the dismissal of the petition.
Hence came
the proposal for the Court to adopt the writ of amparo—widely
used in Latin America, from the root word “amparar” or to
protect—as a new legal remedy to combat extrajudicial
killings and enforced disappearances came about.
In just
two months, the
Puno Court
promulgated the Rule on the Writ of Amparo, which took
effect on October 24, 2007, and the Chief Justice
confidently declared it the “greatest legal weapon to
protect the constitutional rights of our people.”
The writ
of amparo, according to Puno, will deny authorities the
defense of simple denial when they are sued to produce,
before the courts, the bodies of victims of involuntary
disappearances.
It also
allows courts to issue inspection orders and to direct any
person in possession or control of a designated land or
other property, to permit entry for the purpose of
inspecting, measuring, surveying or photographing the
property or any object relevant to the petition.
Since its
implementation, at least nine petitions have already been
filed before the Supreme Court, including the cases of two
missing students of the University of the Philippines
Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno; political activist
Jonas Joseph Burgos Jr., son of the late world press
freedom icon Jose “Joe” Burgos Jr.; and brothers Raymond
and Reynaldo Manalo.
On
November 7, 2007, the writ of amparo showed its true power
when Judge Reinerio Ramas of the Regional Trial Court of
Pagadian City, Zamboanga del Sur ordered the release of
youth and religious leader Ruel Muñasque from military
custody.
Muñasque’s
case is the first known successful amparo petition.
On the
same day, the family of Luisito Bustamante filed a
petition for amparo before the Regional Trial Court of
Davao City seeking his immediate release from the custody
of the military, which arrested and detained him on
suspicion that he was a communist rebel.
The trial
court ordered his release on November 14, making Luisito
the second beneficiary of amparo.
Meanwhile,
the Court of Appeals (CA) has also found merit to issue a
writ of amparo in favor of the Manalo brothers who were
abducted and detained by military personnel for at least
18 months.
The Manalo
brothers, who escaped from their captors on August 13, had
sought the writ of amparo to prevent authorities from
arresting them anew. The SC subsequently issued a
resolution enjoining the military from rearresting the
brothers.
In a
ruling on December 26, the CA Second Division declared
that the brothers were indeed illegally detained by
elements of the 7th Infantry Division of the Philippine
Army and the Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit (Cafgu).
It even
linked retired Army General Jovito Palparan to their
illegal detention, saying that he has knowledge of the
situation of the brothers during their long captivity at
the hands of the military personnel under him.
The Court
of Appeals, likewise, issued a writ of amparo to police
and military officials, ordering them to disclose what
steps they have taken to find Jonas, as sought by his
mother Edita in her petition for amparo, now being heard
by the division headed by Justice Remedios
Salazar-Fernando.
The Puno
Court has been viewed as an activist court even before the
promulgation of the writ of amparo after it designated 99
regional trial courts nationwide to hear, try and decide
cases involving killings of judges, political activists
and members of the media barely three months after he
assumed office on December 7, 2006.
Two weeks
ago, incidentally, the High Court also approved the
designation of more than 100 environmental courts
nationwide to handle the increasing backlog of cases
involving natural resources exploitation and environmental
standards—an area of litigation seen to expand in the next
few years, especially given the priority to mining as an
economic growth driver.
Meanwhile,
the
Puno Court refuses to relax until it sees an end to human-rights
abuses; thus, it vowed to promulgate another legal
remedy—the writ of habeas data—to complement the writs of
habeas corpus and of amparo.
The writ
of habeas data is designed to compel government and
military officials to allow families of victims of
enforced disappearances access to official documents by
invoking the “right to truth.”
It is
expected to be implemented soon.
Asserting
the Judiciary’s independence
Meanwhile,
the
Puno Court was also seen as asserting the Judiciary’s
independence by not voting for the bid of Solicitor
General Agnes Devanadera, who is seen as having strong
political connections to the First Family and other
political groups, to be part of the 15-man High Tribunal.
Devanadera’s appointment to the SC was being pushed by
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, a member of the Judicial
and Bar Council (JBC) chaired by Puno.
Despite
strong backing from Malacañang, the JBC did not include
Devanadera on its shortlist of nominees submitted to
President Arroyo last January to fill up the lone vacancy
in the Court following the retirement of former Chief
Justice Artemio Panganiban.
Likewise,
the Puno Court dealt a big blow to the bid of the Arroyo
government to put behind bars the so-called Batasan 6
members—Party List Reps. Crispin Beltran, Liza Maza, Joel
Virador, Saturnino Ocampo, Teodoro Casiño and Rafael
Mariano—who were charged with rebellion for allegedly
plotting to overthrow the government on February 24, 2007.
The Puno
Court even castigated the Department of Justice for the
“obvious involvement of political considerations” in
filing the rebellion case against the solons. It declared
as well that the DOJ’s preliminary investigation was
tainted with irregularities.
Cleansing
the Judiciary, and other reforms
Since his
assumption as Chief Justice, Puno has been very vocal
about his commitment to curb and punish corruption in the
Judiciary.
In March
2007 Puno issued a directive prohibiting spouses of
justices in the SC, Court of Tax Appeals, Sandiganbayan
and the appellate court from working as staff members.
Puno
explained that his order is in line with the letter and
the spirit of the New Code of Judicial Conduct for the
Philippine Judiciary calling for an ethical Judiciary that
is above suspicion.
In the
same month, Puno summoned all the 17 chairmen of the
divisions of the CA to a meeting to personally air his
concern over allegations of corruption involving some
appellate court justices.
As if to
underscore that corruption has no place in the Judiciary,
the Puno Court subsequently ordered the dismissal of CA
Justice Elvi John Asuncion for undue delay in the disposal
of pending motions for reconsideration in several cases,
gross ignorance of the law and manifest undue interest.
Based on
the records, the SC under Puno’s watch has also dismissed
five court judges from January to December 2007.
Likewise,
some 55 judges have been either suspended, fined or
reprimanded for various administrative offenses.
A total of
19 court employees have been dismissed for various
violations while 89 others have been penalized.
The Puno
Court is in the thick of efforts to promulgate early the
Special Rules of Court on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR).
Puno said
this will be issued, among others, to institutionalize ADR,
declog court dockets, and expedite and specialize in
resolution of disputes.
Indeed, so
much more has to be done and there’s so little resources
and time while new issues keep cropping up. The Puno Court
appears unfazed by it all, focused only on what the law
mandates it to do. Nothing more, nothing less. |
