‘Hometown decisions,” or rulings in favor of the local government in lower courts, have been giving locators in areas accredited by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) second thoughts about bringing their concerns before the courts.
Peza Director General Lilia B. de Lima said at the Asean Leaderspeak Forum of the Asian Institute of Management’s Asean 2015 Project that among the complaints of foreign investors in getting judicial relief is the lower court’s close ties with the local government.
“One of the laments of our locators is that they get hometown decisions. This is due to the fact that most of these judges are beholden to the local government units [LGUs],” de Lima said in her speech at the forum on Wednesday afternoon.
Judges assigned in lower courts are often enticed to side with the local government units. This is because the judges also receive allowances from the LGUs.
De Lima said that, aside from hometown decisions, locators—particularly the foreign investor—are also plagued by harassment from LGUs by way of issuances of arbitrary temporary restraining orders, impeding their business operations.
De Lima declined to expound on specific cases, but said this uncertainty in getting a fair decision dissuades foreign investors and must be addressed. Only when cases are elevated to the Supreme Court (SC) do they stand a fair chance in their case.
For that purpose, Peza is backing the SC’s move to weed out corruption in the lower courts.