‘Letting DOJ build courthouses undermines judicial freedom’

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MANILA, Philippines–A senior magistrate has criticized Congress’ decision to give the Department of Justice (DOJ) the responsibility of building and maintaining the Halls of Justice throughout the country, saying this “violates” the separation of powers between the executive branch and the judiciary.

In a separate opinion on the government’s appeal to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said the move by Congress to transfer the judiciary infrastructure mandate to the DOJ “undermines” judicial independence.

“The inclusion of such an item in the DOJ budget clearly creates an anomaly where the judiciary will have to request the DOJ, an executive department, to construct a Hall of Justice for the judiciary,” Carpio said in a 13-page opinion, officially released by the high court on Wednesday afternoon.

“Not only does this undermine the independence of the judiciary, it also violates ultimately the constitutional separation of powers because one branch is made to beg for the appropriations of another branch to be used in the operations of the former,” he said.

Fund transfer denied

Carpio said Congress transferred this responsibility from the judicial branch to the DOJ “before 2013,” handing over to an executive agency what had long been “among the responsibilities of the judiciary.”

Carpio cited this in his opinion as he denied the government’s claim in its appeal that the judiciary had itself engaged in cross-border fund transfers, as shown by the appropriation of P1.865 billion in funds for the long-pending construction of the Manila Hall of Justice.

The transfer of funds from an agency under one government branch to another was among acts the Supreme Court had invalidated in its July 1 ruling on the DAP, President Aquino’s economic stimulus program.

Acting on the government’s appeal to this ruling, the Supreme Court on Feb. 3 upheld most of its original ruling, relenting only on one point and allowing the augmentation of funds for specific projects even without detailed expense items as long as they have appropriation cover under the General Appropriations Act (GAA).

Still unconstitutional

Still deemed unconstitutional were the withdrawal of “unobligated allotments” from different agencies as savings even before the end of the fiscal year, cross-border transfers of savings and the use of unprogrammed funds without certification of the national treasurer that revenue collections had exceeded revenue targets.

Expounding on the sole act under the DAP that the high court reconsidered in its latest ruling, Associate Justice Arturo Brion said fund augmentation could only be validly done when there is a deficiency.

“An item must have been in existence, and must demonstrably need supplementation, before it may be validly augmented… Without a deficiency, an item cannot be augmented, otherwise, it would violate the constitutional prohibition against money being spent without an appropriation made by law,” said Brion in his 34-page qualified concurrence to the unanimous ruling.

“An item that has no deficiency does not need additional funding, thus, the funding of an item with no deficiency could only mean that an additional PAP (program, activity or project), not otherwise considered in the GAA nor included in the item sought to be augmented, would be funded by public funds,” he said.