MANILA, Philippines?How can judges and justices deliver justice with dispatch when they don?t even have a place to call their own?

Supreme Court Administrator Midas Marquez raised this concern Sunday on the eve of the House deliberation on the proposed P27.1-billion budget the high court was asking from the national government to fund its various financial obligations and programs for 2011.

Almost two-thirds of the budget, or around P18 billion, would be allotted for the wages and salaries of some 2,300 judges and justices, and more than 25,000 court personnel, according to Marquez.

Apart from the mandated wage increases of judges and justices, among the high court?s top priorities were the construction of halls of justice and the modernization of the judiciary.

?The national government has yet to provide the judiciary more than one percent of its annual national budget,? Marquez said.

He said the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) had earmarked only P14 billion for the courts, less than one percent of the proposed P1.6-trillion national budget.

Marquez said he would personally appear before the House budget committee to defend the court?s proposed budget.

As the highest arbiter of the land, the Supreme Court has administrative supervision over more than 2,200 first and second level courts in the country, including the metropolitan, municipal and regional trial courts. It also manages the third level courts?the Sandiganbayan, Court of Appeals and Court of Tax Appeals.

Marquez said the lack of infrastructure was among the reasons why court judges have failed to dispense justice to thousands of pending cases.

?Although there are several reasons [for the] backlogs, problems on infrastructures and other related concerns are the major ones,? he said in a mobile phone interview.

According to Marquez, Manila, the country?s capital, does not have its own hall of justice, unlike nearby cities in the metropolis which have air-conditioned buildings.

Since 2005, the Supreme Court has been pushing for the construction of a P1.5-billion state-of-the-art courthouse in Manila, but every year, the DBM would shoot down its budget, he said.

At present, the metropolitan and regional trial courts in Manila are separately situated at the City Hall, the old building of the Office of the Ombudsman and the dilapidated Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) building.

?Being the nation?s capital, it would be fitting if we could have state-of-the-art and model courtrooms in Manila,? Marquez said.