Kiko pushes maritime courts

By Joel R.San Juan

ALTHOUGH he is amenable to the proposal to designate maritime courts to expeditiously decide on cases involving maritime disasters, Chief Justice Reynato Puno said the initiative should start with Congress.

In an interview after the two-day Forum on Increasing Access to Justice, Puno agreed with Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan that justice should be rendered swiftly for the families of the victims of sea tragedies like the MV Princess of the Stars disaster which claimed more than 700 lives.

“I think the latest tragedy and the scope and the scale of tragedies would call for the different treatment of this kind of accidents that wreak tremendous losses both on the lives and properties of our people. So Senator Pangilinan has a point stressing the need for some out-of-the-box thinking to meet these continuing disasters,” Puno told reporters in an interview.

Pangilinan, who represented the Senate in the forum, noted that most of the victims of maritime disasters are poor.

“The cases involving sea tragedies would show that these take many years, decades. Those involved in sea tragedies are the poor, the marginalized. Common folk who cannot afford air travel. They are easily forgotten just as the next newsworthy event takes center stage. It is the entire system of justice that is put to test for the nth time. How justice can be achieved in this recent sea tragedy would be a testament to our system of justice’s ability to provide the poor, the marginalized with justice,” Pangilinan said in his speech during the forum.

The senator noted that it is an injustice to the families of victims of the recent tragedy if their case would drag to 20 years, as what happened in the case of the sunken MV Dońa Paz.

“The Philippines’s record of maritime disasters is deplorable, and unscrupulous shipping companies get away from their liabilities because of the slow dispensation of justice. We need to look into creating special courts that will focus on maritime cases to address this problem swiftly,” Pangilinan said.

Pangilinan suggested that certain branches of the Regional Trial Court be designated to hear and decide cases involving maritime accidents such as sinking vessels, collisions and fire.

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Kiko pushes maritime courts

ALTHOUGH he is amenable to the proposal to designate maritime courts to expeditiously decide on cases involving maritime disasters, Chief Justice Reynato Puno said the initiative should start with Congress.

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