Judges get higher pay than GMA

 I only learned yesterday that our lowest paid judge in a municipal circuit trial court in the Philippines gets at least P68,000 in salary and “special” allowances each month. On the other hand, the highest paid in the ranks of the appellate court gets at least P100,000 in monthly take-home pay. This is according to Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan as he claimed credit for having doubled the compensation of the members of the Philippine judiciary through a landmark bill he sponsored in Congress.

If that is so, our judges are better paid than President Arroyo who gets only P63,525 a month. With that kind of pay, how come the wheels of justice in our country still grind exceedingly slow?

Pangilinan, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Justice, co-authored the bill for the pay increase of members of the judiciary under Republic Act (RA) 9227 approved during the 12th Congress and signed into law by President Arroyo in 2003. He tells me it was really the spirit and intent of the law to speed up the wheels of justice by getting the “best and the brightest” to serve as judge by providing the necessary financial incentives to entice them to join the government service.

Actually, he explained, the pay increase to members of the judiciary was implemented on a staggered basis, or 25 percent increase over a four-year period starting November 2003. The 100 percent increase took effect in November last year. The government prosecution service also received “special allowances” that increased their monthly pay by as much as 30 to 40 percent.

I gathered these in a chat with Pangilinan when he visited us at the Tuesday Club yesterday at the EDSA Shangri-La. Pangilinan was re-elected by his peers to serve anew as the Senate majority leader. He is also the designated member of the Senate to the eight-man Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) that screens all nominees to various vacancies from the lowest courts to Sandiganbayan, all the way to the Supreme Court (SC).

Before this law took effect, Pangilinan cited that much of the delays in our judicial system were largely due to the huge case backlogs in courts all over the country. There were a lot of vacancies in the courts, he noted. There were simply not enough judges. Therefore, these judges have to divide all these cases among themselves and that certainly slowed down the resolution of cases. The low pay, not to mention the inherent dangers of the job, certainly did not appear attractive to high caliber lawyers for them to aspire to become a judge.

Now that judges get better paid, the Senator noted with satisfaction that lately, the JBC is being swamped with applications. In fact, he says, the JBC gets as many as 30 applications a day for vacancies in the lower courts. Thus, Pangilinan believed RA 9227 has helped a lot in addressing this problem.

He conceded it would take at least a few more years, perhaps at the latest by 2010 before there could be a faster rate of resolving and disposing  cases. But for the meantime, the courts have yet to clear first the existing backlogs of cases accumulated through the years while also attending to new ones being filed.

With the current impasse in the Senate committee chairmanships, Pangilinan could not say though, if he would continue to serve at the JBC. He, however, expressed interest in staying on at the JBC which he first joined in 2001. So that, he said, he could sustain the judicial reforms he has helped pushed in Congress. His being a member of the so-called “Wednesday Group” at the Senate, which includes Senate President Manuel Villar, Pangilinan’s wish to stay at the JBC would likely be granted.

Himself a lawyer, the Senator is an ex officio member of the JBC along with Rep. Simeon Datumanong. Both of them represent Congress in the JBC. It is chaired by SC Chief Justice Reynato Puno and its other members are Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, a representative each from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), from the academe, a retired SC justice, and from the private sector, currently represented by retired Justice Raoul Victorino.

The JBC itself has undergone sweeping reforms, Pangilinan added. The interview of nominees to the SC, as part of the screening process, has been opened to media and the public in general. If he would have his way, the discussions of the JBC on the final selection of their nominees to the SC should likewise be opened to the public.

The JBC is at present in the eye of the storm after President Arroyo waffled in her choice of Sandiganbayan Justice Gregory Ong after the latter’s Filipino citizenship was questioned all the way to the SC. The SC ruled Ong has to prove his being a natural-born Filipino through judicial proceedings where he can present evidence that he is not a Chinese citizen to correct entries in his birth certificate.

The President appointed Ong out of the “short list” submitted to her by the JBC for the vacancy created by the retirement of SC associate justice Romeo Calleja on April 27. Over the weekend, the Palace withdrew the appointment of Ong purportedly upon the request of the nominee even as he has yet to defend his case to the SC.

Actually, Pangilinan disclosed, this was the third time the name of Ong was included in the “short list” submitted by the JBC to the Palace. As far as the JBC is concerned, Pangilinan insisted, they acted with regularity in nominating Ong. From what I’ve heard from many government officials, Ong apparently has deeper problems with the SC, more than his supposed not being a natural born Filipino. So there is wisdom in the proposal of Pangilinan that JBC’s final selection of a “short list” of nominees they would submit to the Palace, should likewise be transparent and open to the public.

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