Restoring civility at the Sandiganbayan

It’s good that the Supreme Court has issued an order installing newly appointed Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang as chairman of the anti-graft court’s third division.

This move of the High Tribunal will help restore civility in the Sandiganbayan and stop on its tracks the move by some Sandiganbayan officials to embarrass Tang whose appointment as presiding justice has been questioned—not so much because of her qualifications, but because of the fact that she is the most junior justice, the youngest and the most recent appointee to the court.

The griping officials find it hard to accept Tang’s appointment to the Sandiganbayan’s top position because in the process she bypassed more senior magistrates. Since she is only 58 years old, none of the sitting Sandiganbayan associate justices will have a chance to become Presiding Justice. They will all reach the mandatory retirement age of 70 before Tang.

Sandiganbayan officials who opposed the appointment of Tang have been mocking her as a “queen without a throne” since, until the SC order, she did not even preside over any of the five divisions of the anti-graft court.

Without the intervention of the Supreme Court, there would be the strange situation of the Presiding Justice continuing as a junior member of the fifth division. It is unlikely that one among the five senior Sandiganbayan justices chairing a division would give way.

Tang wanted to assume the chairmanship of the third division since this was the division headed by former Presiding Justice Francisco Villaruz when he retired last June 8.

But Associate Justice Jose Hernandez who replaced Villaruz as chairman refused to relinquish the post.
Hernandez insisted that he had become the permanent chairman of the third division under the proposed Revised Internal Rules of the Sandiganbayan.

He cites Section 5(a), Rule II of the proposed Revised Internal Rules which says: “In the position of Division Chairman—if a permanent vacancy occurs in the position of a Division, the most senior Associate Justice in the Sandiganbayan who is not yet a Chairman shall become Chairman of that Division.”

Hernandez is the most senior among the 15 Associate Justices of the Sandiganbayan although he will not be retiring until 2016.

However, with her appointment as Presiding Justice she became first in the ranking among the Sandiganbayan justices as what would have happened if Justices Efren de la Cruz or Gregory Ong, who were also nominated for the post, been selected.

The case of Tang is similar to that of Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno who was the most junior among the Supreme Court Associate Justices when she was appointed to head the SC. Her appointment made her the highest ranking official of the High Tribunal and even if some SC justices were initially reluctant, they had to accept this fact.

If you consider the Sereno precedent, it is not surprising that the Supreme Court has ordered Hernandez to vacate the post of chairman of the third division and allowed Tang to assume the post.

The SC decision is in response to the five-page letter Tang sent to Chief Justice Sereno last Oct. 10, seeking guidance on the confusion of who will chair the third division in view of the adamance of Hernandez to give it up.

Actually Tang had already addressed the issue of her qualifications to be the Sandiganbayan presiding justice in the deliberation of the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC). “I may be a junior in judicial experience but I am not a junior in legal and administrative experience,” Tang said when she was grilled by members of the JBC.
Indeed, Tang is not a junior in terms of experience.

It was Tang as assistant solicitor general who filed the pleading to oppose the plea bargaining agreement between the Sandiganbayan and former military comptroller Gen. Carlos Garcia.

She is also responsible for the government’s success in recovering over P60 billion of the so-called coconut levy fund.

She had an excellent performance in the first 10 months as associate justice of the Sandiganbayan where according to news reports she resolved 31 incidents in 31 cases of an average of three incidents resolved per month.

This record must have helped convince members of the JBC that she is serious in her commitment to speed up the resolution of pending cases before the anti-graft court.

Tang has an impressive career record. Before her appointment as associate justice, she worked at the Office of the Solicitor General rising from Solicitor 1 in 1984 to Assistant Solicitor General from 1994 to 2012.
She was a litigation lawyer from 1982 to 1984 and she was legal assistant at the SC from 1980 to 1982.
She has been a law professor at the University of Sto. Tomas since 2010 and at the San Beda Law School since 2006. She graduated in the top 10 of her class at the San Beda College of Law in 1979 and she passed the bar in the same year with a rating of 84.95 percent.

source:  Manila Standard Column of  Alvin Capino