Ed i tor ia l Uphold daang matuwid raise the SC bar
LJustice Carandang’s case
Lenient and permissive
AWYERS and plain citizens wish to see the nation’s soft moral infrastructure built into the strong that President Benigno Aquino 3rd espouses and want Court of Appeals Associate Justice Rosmari D. Carandang dropped from the Judicial and Bar Council shortlist of nominees for the position of Supreme Court Associate Justice.
Their main reason is that the lady CA justice was once charged with a grave crime at the Supreme Court—participating in the kidnapping of a rape victim and allegedly causing her to be brought to hospital. The Court dismissed the case but nevertheless admonished her for a “slight lapse in judgment.”
Anti-crime and pro- lawyers want the JBC’s criteria for appointments to the judiciary to be made more strict. We agree. Under the JBC’s rules, applicants already with the judiciary who had been penalized with a fine of more than P10,000 for having committed a wrongdoing are disqualified from nomination. Also, applicants with pending criminal or administrative cases, those who have been convicted in any criminal or administrative case, or those facing cases in foreign tribunals are automatically disqualified from being nominated for appointment to any judicial post or as Ombudsman or Deputy Ombudsman.
Justice Carandang does not have any pending administrative case and the only stain in her record is the High Court’s “admonition” because of her “slight lapse in judgment.”
What was this “slight lapse in judgment”? The mother of a 15-year-old girl who had allegedly been made love to with her consent 19 times by her 27-year-old schoolteacher filed an administrative complaint against CA Justice Carandang with the Supreme Court. It turned out that the teacher is the CA justice’s nephew.
The girl’s mother had learned of her daughter’s relationship with the teacher in December 2006. The mother and her older sister got the girl to write an affidavit detailing her alleged rape. She wrote an erotic tale of being wooed by the teacher, falling for him, entering into “a boyfriend-girlfriend” relationship with him on April 14, 2006 and later going on her own to their assignations in a Naga City hotel.
In February 2007, the girl’s mother and sister brought her to the Naga fiscal’s office to write a complaint against her lover.
Afterward, the girl ran away from her mother and elder sister and went to the teacher to live with him and his mother. Meanwhile, the Naga City prosecutors developed an active case in the courts against the teacher. There was a warrant of arrest for him.
Then on March 30, 2007, the lovers appeared at Justice Carandang’s Court of Appeals office asking for help. She helped because the teacher was family. And she saw that her nephew and the girl “were determined to fight for their love,” so the CA Justice found an attorney for them.
With the attorney’s help the girl executed a handwritten affidavit that told of her love for the Justice’s nephew.
Five months after her daughter’s disappearance, the mother was contacted by the lovers’ lawyer to arrange for her to meet her daughter and sign a document dropping her charges against her daughter’s lover. She agreed to meet—at a judge’s office—but secretly laid a trap for her daughter and her lover. She had DSWD and NBI agents with her. But the man was not there. All the mother could do was take her daughter home. Later, however, the authorities did find the teacher and arrested him.
Learning of the help Justice Carandang had given her nephew, the mother filed a complaint-letter addressed to then Chief Justice Reynato Puno.
The Supreme Court assigned retired SC Justice Carolina GriñoAquino to investigate the case.
On November 25, 2008, the Supreme Court en banc decided to dismiss the mother’s administrative complaint against Justice Carandang.
The Court agreed with the investigator’s finding that “there was a shade of impropriety in J. Carandang’s calling Prosecutor Rolando Ramirez from the Department of Justice to her office in the Court of Appeals on June 7, 2007 to notarize the affidavits” of the lovers.
“Those affidavits were prepared by Atty. Villanueva [the lawyer Justice Carandang got for her nephew] to be used in connection with the criminal cases against” [the nephew] “in Naga City. They could have been notarized in Atty. Villanueva’s office. But, since J. Carandang wanted them acknowledged before a state prosecutor, she should have sent” [her nephew and the girl] “to the office of Prosecutor Ramirez in the Department of Justice, instead of calling the prosecutor to her office in the Court of Appeals. Having the affidavits executed in her office was convenient” [for her nephew and his minor-age lover] “but inconvenient for Prosecutor Ramirez. Morever, her office and its facilities should not have been used, even briefly, to serve the private interest” of the lovers, “which was completely unrelated to her official work as a justice of the Court of Appeals.”
Former SC Justice Griño Aquino cited precedents in which the High Court had held court facilities must only be used for purposes directly related to the “to the functioning and operation for which the courts of justice has (sic) been established ….” And that government property should not be used “for the personal convenience of the judge (or his friends and relatives.)” But SC Investigator former Justice Griño-Aquino was lenient to the respondent and her recommendation too permissive.
“While the use of J. Carandang’s office for the execution of” the lovers’ “affidavits, smacked of impropriety, it may be considered a slight lapse in judgment which did not amount to misconduct calling for sanction by this Court. Perhaps, an admonition to forestall more serious lapses in the future will do.”
The Supreme Court heeded its former-justice investigator’s recommendation.
We don’t agree that Justice’s Carandang actions constituted a mere “slight lapse in judgment.” As one of the puritanical lawyers told
the CA Justice’s nephew was a wanted man. Why did she not have him arrested when he went to her office?
Because the CA Justice’s actions in this case are considered a mere lapse and not a wrongdoing, is the reason more insidious lapses are treated permissively. This permissiveness goes against the principle of President Aquino’s
And what about and self-sacrifice? Even if the JBC’s internal rules allow Justice Carandang to be placed on the shortlist, she should have known that her being a candidate for Supreme Court Associate Justice would cast a cloud on the integrity of the Court. She should not have applied at all.
PUBLIC school teachers play a key role in Philippine society. They mould the hearts and minds of the majority of the Filipino youth. They teach their students what is right or wrong and what is good or bad. They reinforce in school what is traditionally taught, or ought to be taught, at home. They teach our young citizens to be honest, creative, resourceful and productive. To a large extent, they determine the values that ultimately govern the conduct of our citizens.
To their students who have no parents, they play the role of substitute parents. To their students who have parents, they play the role of secondary parents. In both cases, they provide their students with a strong sense of belonging akin to close family ties.
When their students do good, they encourage doing better. When their students do better, they encourage doing best. When their students do best, they feel happiest. When their students do bad, they try to win them back. When their students do worse they use the kindest words. When their students do the worst, that is the time they work the most.
If it is true that not all public school teachers are good, it is because most of them are better. And if it is true that most of them are better, it is because some of them are the best.
If teaching is a noble profession, teaching in public schools is the noblest. The performance expectation is high, but the pay is low. The workload is heavy, but
IWAS watching yesterday on ANC and the topic was the tailings leaks in Philex’s Padcal mine that contaminated the Balog Creek and the Agno River, which I also recently wrote about.
Interviewee Michael Toledo, Philex’s senior vice president for communication, apologized for the mining accident, which he said had already been contained and is being cleaned up to the tune of about P1 billion pesos.
Philex, however, is contesting the P1.034-billion fine slapped on it by the government because, Toledo said, the accident was a result of force majeure and not because of negligence on the part of the company.
Philex is arguing that under the civil code, a company is not liable for damages caused by force majeure.
If Philex pays the P1 billion then it is tantamount to admitting negligence on its part. Hence, as correctly pointed out by Director Leo Jasareno of the Mines and Geoscience Bureau (the other interviewee in the program), the Philex position is, simply put, “P1 billion or nothing.”
We expect a legal scrum over this issue surely and soon. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is expected to render its final decision on the P1.034-billion fine it imposed against Philex, but the latter will surely contest it if it’s unfavorable to the company.
Lawsuits regarding the Padcal leak may even set new precedents on the issue, or the case may drag on and be locked in legal limbo.