Amante: Chief preoccupations

THE Supreme Court (SC) cannot function well under a dictator. Newly appointed Chief Justice Lucas Purugganan Bersamin said that some 10 months ago, when Maria Lourdes Sereno still presided over the SC. Now, he has 10 months to show the kind of leadership he thinks the High Court deserves.

That the Court must be collegial seems an important point for the new chief. When he appeared before the House of Representatives’ justice committee last January, Justice Bersamin said that the Court, in all its actions, must function in a democratic manner. He admitted he had felt offended by Sereno’s “attitudes as chief justice.” He again mentioned this last May, when he joined seven other justices in granting the quo warranto petition that removed Sereno from office.

“Primus inter pares lang po siya, eh (First among equals is how she should have conducted herself),” Bersamin, in his concurring opinion, recalled telling the House committee. “Hindi naman siya po reyna na titingnan, titingalain at susundin (She is not a queen whom we should look up to and obey).” He also emphasized that he had never called the former chief justice a dictator and that, despite their differences, he possessed the “professional objectivity and detachment” needed to weigh in on the case against her.

This has been an unusually high-profile time for the Court, during which three individuals, all in the space of a year, have held the post of chief justice. Yet for all the tensions and internal conflicts we’ve caught glimpses of, those of us outside the fraternal community of lawyers know little about the SC justices and how they operate.

In its profile, Rappler reports that Bersamin joined the judiciary in 1986, with an appointment to the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Quezon City. Nearly 17 years later, another appointment sent him to the Court of Appeals. Six years after that, in 2009, he was appointed to the SC by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. He is set to retire in October 2019. Among his achievements was placing ninth in the 1973 Bar Examinations. His profile on the Senate Electoral Tribunal website points out that in the 2002 Judicial Excellence Awards, he won the Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos Award as Outstanding RTC Judge.

What little we know, we can try to supplement by reading some of the decisions he wrote.

Recall that in July 2012, the Office of the Ombudsman charged former president Arroyo and nine other officials with plunder. The anti-graft office alleged that the President, in conspiracy with seven officials of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) and two officials of the Commission on Audit, had diverted some P366 million in PCSO funds to confidential and intelligence funds, then transferred these “in the guise of fictitious expenditures.” Last July 21, 2016, the Court dismissed that plunder case, saying the evidence was insufficient. Among the facts that doomed the prosecution’s case was, according to the decision Bersamin penned, “the silence of the information on who the main plunderer or the mastermind was.”

We can guess what motivated President Rodrigo Duterte to choose Bersamin as chief justice, when two other colleagues had served longer on the Court and he had promised to appoint the most senior justice to that office. In any case, Bersamin deserves a fair shot at introducing reforms that would empower the courts to resolve disputes more quickly, fairly, and one hopes, independently. But remember: the complicated balance of powers that allows the Court to check the abuse of executive authority also allows the chief executive to pack the court with individuals whose track records and positions match the Palace’s political agenda.

Or purge it of justices who might get in the way.