Monday, November 05, 2007 Sanchez: Silver lining By Benedicto Sanchez Nature Speakes
FILIPINOS carp on life's hassles in our archipelago. They make it sound like the country are the pits, right there at the bottom. Filipinos can't do anything right.
Leading the naysayer pack are Filipinos who left these benighted shores for the land of the free and the brave and then flail at those left behind.
Guess what? The Philippines doesn't have any monopoly on political shenanigans. I had a good laugh when I read Solita Collas-Monsod's Saturday column.
Writes Solita, Filipinos gasped at the alleged overpricing of the ZTE-NBN project-from $130 million to $329 million, a 153 percent overprice.
But that's penny-ante. Filipinos can't do it right, even with corruption. They should learn from Americans, who do things big-time. Continues Solita, "the alleged overprice involved in the Halliburton-KBR projects makes that magnitude sound positively picayune-going as high as between 1,500 percent and 2,500 percent, and involving billions of dollars. One whistle-blower is quoted as saying: 'One thousand percent is common, and 500 percent is routine. I have never seen a markup less than 100 percent.'"
The US government official implicated in the Halliburton stinker deal is none other than Vice President Dick Cheney, who was the Halliburton CEO before he ran for vice president with President George W. "Dubya" Bush in 2000, and who awarded giant contracts to Halliburton when he was secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush.
At least, public pressure put a brake on the ZTE-NBN deal. But not so with Halliburton. Where Halliburton was concerned, there reportedly wasn't even the pretense of a bid. It's business as usual and remains very much the major contractor of government projects in Iraq.
Thank God for the small-time crooks in the Philippines. I call that a silver lining. Of course, I'm being facetious. But I'm not, with developments in our judicial front. The reforms aren't just linings, they're certified sterling silver.
The Saturday news notes that the public perceives that our courts mark time in resolving cases. To speed up the resolution of cases, the Supreme Court's judicial reform program has to decongest court dockets. Many accused spend time in crammed jails awaiting final adjudication.
One major factor for judicial delays is the high rate of vacancy among personnel, including judges, prosecutors and public attorneys. This has reached more than 35 percent. The judicial system employs a limited number of judges while the number of filed cases is simply piling up.
That means that the few available judges have to deal with overflowing court dockets.
The sheer number of cases boggles the mind, with 60 percent of cases filed in court involve bouncing checks. Money-lenders are using the courts as collection agents. Even small amounts, like P5,000, reach the court.
To address the issue, the Supreme Court has drawn up an alternative dispute resolution mechanism, using mediation, conciliation, and then, under its development partners, to pilot-test small claims courts.
The Bacolod Philippine Mediation Center estimates that Batasang Pambansa 22 (anti-bouncing check law) cases go up to 80 percent. The rest are involved with collection of sums of money. I hope the small-claims courts reach Negros Occidental. That should declog the dockets some more so our magistrates can focus on the heinous crimes.
The trivial cases compete for attention with the serious and heinous crimes. As a court-annexed mediator, I was aghast when I mediated a slight physical injury case. If the complainant wins her case which might take her light years for the court to decide, she could get P500 in damages.
Yet a wise guy advised to hire a private prosecutor. To get her counsel on board, she had to pay him P10 grand as acceptance fee. Figure out the math. I can't. They seem to add up to STUPIDITY.
The remaining percentage in Bacolod's PMC tackles ejectment, slight physical and oral defamation, reflevin (which is actually similar to collection of sums of money, except the collection is in kind).
I'm proud of my role as a court-annexed mediator even though the PHILJA pays us peanuts. It should pay us more to encourage mediators to handle and settle more cases.
Fat chance, though. The Supreme Court estimates that it spends P600 million on the maintenance of halls of justice a year. But only P300 million is given by the Department of Budget Management. Our legislature is more concerned on using 73 percent of our national budget to pay our foreign loans.
Now, that's what I call a brass farthing. Useless piece of legislation at the bottom of the sh_t pile.
