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DAVAO
CITY—“You cannot protect a person’s life, liberty or
security just because you are sleepy.”
Judges
can take this as a warning or a gentle reminder but it
is clear from Chief Justice Reynato Puno in his talk
here on Tuesday that when victims see redress from the
courts, there should be no undue delay in the response
of judges.
Specifically, Puno was replying to a query on whether
the provisions on accepting a petition for a writ of
amparo had set limits on time and place to filing.
The
query has in it the unexpressed apprehension of his
audience of judges, prosecutors and members of the bar
that judges may have to accept a petition if already in
bed or in the wee hours of the morning.
The
Chief Justice said the writ has provided that “the
petition may be filed on any day and at any time with
the Regional Trial Court of the place where the threat,
act or omission was committed or any of its elements
occurred, or with the Sandiganbayan, the Court of
Appeals, the Supreme Court (SC), or any justice of such
courts. The writ shall be enforceable anywhere in the
Philippines.”
He
added, “Any petition can be filed anywhere and anytime,
including weekends. And it can be filed even in a
restaurant where the judge could be found.”
There is
another innovation in the writ—the removal of the
requirement of paying docket and other technical fees in
filing a petition because the writ was meant to bring
the justice system nearer to victims “who are mostly the
poorest in our country.”
Although
victims of the string of unsolved political
assassinations, summary executions and forced
disappearances were reported among the known critics of
the administration and leaders or key personages of
religious and nongovernment organizations, more victims
were also turning up among the organizations of poor
villagers in the rural and urban areas.
The writ
of amparo was taken from the Spanish word, amparar
meaning “to protect,” and Puno said the writ was adapted
by the SC following a national summit of government,
military, police, civic and political leaders on the
unsolved murders of government critics and alleged
sympathizers of both the Moro and communist-led
insurgents and terror organizations.
He
assured the judges though that despite the apparent
urgency in many cases, assessing the petition “is still
within your judgment on determining its urgency.”
If it
was not quite urgent, “You can always tell the
petitioners to come back tomorrow and file that petition
in the court. And then you follow the same rules of
court and other processes that we observe.”
But he
cautioned judges that they should carefully assess the
urgency of the petition because if delayed even one day,
that may be too long for the victims so that the judge
has to set the summary hearings quickly for cases that
“usually need urgent action because by that time, the
victim may have been killed already or the evidence may
have been erased already.”
“There
is that danger, of course, but we don’t proceed from
that assumption,” he said. “We have to do a lot of
balancing acts here and we can not rush things.”
While
the writ is aimed in ensuring speedy action and making
legal remedy very accessible for the aggrieved families
or parties, “we also don’t want to compromise national
security and we also have to protect public officials
and employees, including the private parties, who may be
innocent.”
Puno
also agreed with a lawyer in the audience that “we need
a massive dose of education on human rights” and added
that he would be going around the country to hold
symposiums and dialogues regarding the writ. |
