Two court decisions came down last week. One was in regard to criminal activity and the other was a civil case. Both illustrate the failure of the Philippine judicial system.
The Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the K to 12 basic education program of the government. The Sandiganbayan court found former first lady Imelda Marcos guilty of graft. The civil case upheld the law passed by the Congress and signed into law by the President in 2013. The criminal case against Mrs. Marcos was filed in 1991 and took nearly three decades to adjudicate.
In the “Pirkei Avot”—the first compilation of the oral teachings of the Jewish Rabbis—it says: “The sword comes upon the world because of the delaying of justice and the perverting of justice”. The basis of much of western law—the Magna Carta of 1215—reads in Clause 40: “To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, rights or justice.”
A nation’s economy is only as strong as its banking system. A nation’s society is only as strong as its judicial system.
From the most recent Index of Economic Freedom regarding the Philippines: “Judicial independence is strong, but the courts are plagued by inefficiency, low pay, intimidation, delays and long case backlogs. Corruption and cronyism are pervasive.”
The judicial system and the application of the law is a part of every facet of society. We complain about how difficult it can be to start and maintain a business in the Philippines. Certainly, many of the problems are due to the inefficiency of the bureaucracy and too many overlapping jurisdictions.
However, of all the factors that make up the “ease,” the Philippines’s “Quality of judicial processes index” scores 7.5 out of 18, lower than Iraq and Zimbabwe. For the “Strength of legal rights index” (0-12), the Philippines scores a disastrous “1.”
Corruption is a constant discussion. However, it is supposed to be the legal and judicial system that is the most important defense and the system has failed. The people have no control over the Judiciary from top to bottom. The members of the Judiciary are unelected and are not subject to any meaningful input from the people.
Further, the self-proclaimed guardians of the people—the press and media —do not care about the system in a consequential way. Often, their political biases and narrative are more important as they prefer to blame individuals in power rather than the root causes. The Philippines’s score on “Corruption Index” from Transparency International was a disgusting “34” out of 100 in 2017, exactly what it was in 2012, with the highest recent score at “38” in 2014. All scores in the “30s” are considered “Corrupt.”
The headline reads—“PHL ranking in global rule of law index sinks under Duterte” addressing the World Justice Project “Rule of Law Index.” The Philippines’s 2017 score for Civil Law is 0.47 and for Criminal Law 0.31 out of 1.00. Yet, because politics is more important than the people, not mentioned was that in 2014, the Civil Law score was worse at 0.40, and the Criminal Law score was better at 0.36. In 2010 both scores were significantly better at 0.48 and 0.53.
Certainly these “Rule of Law” scores have gone down. But also concurrently has the evaluation of the Philippine judicial system. No amount of political spin is going to change the fact that the Philippines has a major problem in the Judiciary, as it has for a long time. The justices and judges must clean up their own house.