Toward an independent judiciary

EDITORIAL

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07/12/2007

What has become crystal-clear is that most needed in this country under an administration run by a vindictive and highly insecure Chief Executive is a completely independent judiciary to effectively curb an abusive government that moreover makes a mockery of the right to due process and the Rule of Law — given a legislature that looks the other way when abuses are committed by the executive.

There is no denying that under the Gloria regime, charges are being manufactured by the state through clearly perjured affidavits from paid witnesses against the perceived political enemies of Gloria, a case in point being the charges of rebellion leveled against the six leftist congressmen known as the Batasan 5, plus the recently released Anakpawis Rep. Crispin Beltran who spent a-year-and-a-half in detention.

The Supreme Court (SC) junked with finality the charges against these leftist congressmen, stating quite clearly in its ruling that the evidence presented by the state was worthless.

Quite obviously, too, the Department of Justice’s Raul Gonzalez and his state prosecutors knew that the charges were politically motivated and baseless, yet they insisted on filing these charges, and all in aid of detaining these leftist congressman-critics of Gloria and her government.

If the judiciary — the lower and appellate courts, along with the SC — decides on obviously politically motivated cases without taking into account political considerations — none of these cases is bound to flourish, and the executive branch, knowing that it cannot influence the courts, will have to stop manufacturing evidence and charges against its political foes since these will merely be trashed by the courts once elevated by the state prosecutors or the Ombudsman in instances where the complaints are filed in that office. Dismissal after dismissal of such trumped-up charges will no doubt effectively curb the abuses of this vindictive administration.

It is the same thing in the trumped-up charges of plunder against detained President Joseph Estrada. The Sandiganbayan justices cannot but know that these are trumped-up charges. They were witness to the fact that the testimony of Luis “Chavit” Singson on his claimed P130 million delivery of the diverted tobacco excise tax was perjured, since there was an ocular and physical examination on the basis of testimony, and with the central bank officials themselves proving that the claimed amount could not have fit into the boxes which size was given by Singson himself.

There is also documentary proof that Estrada is not Jose Velarde and does not own the Velarde account — the same proof that the prosecution refused to present as evidence, knowing that its case would fold under if submitted to the court.

Yet the case was allowed to drag on for more than six years, and on account of political considerations.

That Estrada’s plunder case is a political case can hardly be denied. He was charged with plunder because he had rejected Gloria’s offer for him to leave the country and live in exile in a country of his choice in exchange for his written letter of resignation from the presidency.

Despite the failure of the prosecution to prove its charges against Estrada, there are clear indications that Gloria is meddling in his case and wants Estrada convicted. Even Gloria’s staunchest ally in the Senate, Sen. Miriam Santiago, has pointed out that a guilty verdict for Estrada will only be for the “political good” of Gloria and not necessarily good for the country.

There are many more cases lodged by the state against the perceived political foes and critics of Gloria and they all flourish because the courts do not immediately dismiss such cases.

It is too unrealistic to believe that a largely prostituted judiciary will change its ways overnight and become independent of the executive.

But the legislature can help in curbing such abuses by the executive branch and minimize prostitution of the judiciary.

It can start by crafting a law that will penalize criminally the executive arm of government through steep fines for wrongly accusing individuals of crimes based on manufactured evidence and have the fiscals charged as well in court. Then, too, justices who have been found to have dragged such cases that should have been dismissed from the start, should also be penalized through some judicial measure.

Those accused and detained who are later found to have been wrongly accused will be automatically paid a steep price for every day that the accused spend their time in detention.

It will at least be a first step toward helping the judiciary gain more independence and imbibe a bit of probity.

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