Graft is not limited to executive officials and staffs, though. Surveys have shown citizens crying about it in the courts as well. A 2004 US report deplores corruption and inefficiency in the Philippine judiciary. Personal ties and venality "undermines the (duty) of some government employees to ensure due process and equal justice," it states. "That results in impunity for wealthy and influential offenders, and widespread doubt that the judicial process would produce fair outcomes."
This is not to say that the judiciary has been sleeping on the anti-graft job. The Supreme Court has been dismissing or suspending erring judges at a rate of about two dozens a year. Still, as in the executive, the effort is seen to be wanting.
Many ways have been suggested by anti-corruption groups to clean up the courts. Two of these can be done immediately by the High Tribunal: a yearly evaluation and lifestyle checks of all judges and justices.
A yearly evaluation has worked in the US state of Virginia, although its number of magistrates and system of judicial appointments differ vastly from the Philippines’. There, they have only 400 judges and justices from the lowest courts to the state Supreme Court, serving eight-, ten- or twelve-year terms. In the Philippines, thousands of judges serve until retirement or resignation in different courts: municipal, metropolitan or regional; special units like tax appeals and Muslim Shari’ah; a five-division Sandiganbayan and a 15-division Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court. Virginia’s evaluations are made by all lawyers, judges and retired jurists for the benefit of the state legislature, which reappoints magistrates. A Philippine-style evaluation can be done by chapter members of the Integrated Bar, and also serving and retired jurists.
The evaluation form must include questions on a judge’s work ethics, from punctuality to speed in making rulings, but more important, freedom from bias and clarity of decisions. Kept confidential, this is to be submitted to the Supreme Court for analysis and verification. It can serve as basis to start an investigation on a judge’s misconduct and questionable rulings.
Supreme Court justices must themselves be rated by lawyers who argue cases before them, and their serving and retired peers. The forms may be submitted to the Judicial and Bar Council for review and action. The Council can tackle the Chief Justice’s evaluation upon his automatic inhibition. In effect, all jurists shall be made accountable for his acts.
Closer to home, lifestyle checks have worked in the Philippine executive branch since 2003. Close to 30 officials in the Bureaus of Customs and of Internal Revenue, and in the Departments of Public Works and of Transportation and Communications have been indicted before the Sandiganbayan for failing to explain wealth incommensurate with their declared assets and known incomes. It was relatively easy to flush them out. As Eufemio Domingo, one-time head of the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission, said, Filipino grafters cannot help but show off the fruits of their crime. Too many jewelries and SUVs, mansions and condos and huge farms, memberships in expensive golf clubs and country resorts, frequent foreign travels and exclusive schooling of children abroad — these are telltale signs of an official living it up courtesy of the taxpayer.
Justices and judges recently received 50-percent raises from increased court fees. But the pay rates are still not big enough for them to splurge. Yet some of them have been living in ostentatious luxury. The Supreme Court can conduct lifestyle checks of the magistrates it supervises. Like in the executive, it simply needs to compare the visible with the declared assets.
These are but two ways to put judicial reforms into higher gear – to match those in the executive and complete the cleanup of government. As for the legislature, a sure way to curb corruption has long been proposed: line-item budgeting of projects to be funded by pork barrels. Just that, senators and congressmen can’t seem to make the first step towards it.