Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales during oral arguments at the Supreme Court in Baguio City. Morales had been accused of abuse for quickly suspending Makati Mayor Junjun Binay, but a justice said she is simply a speed reader. TARRA QUISMUNDO
BAGUIO CITY—A Supreme Court justice has vouched for a talent Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales does not often reveal to many people: She may well be a speed reader.
Insinuations that Morales could not absorb voluminous documents before she ordered the suspension of Makati City Mayor Junjun Binay was a disservice to her sterling career in the judiciary, Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin said on Tuesday during the second round of oral arguments on Binay’s case.
Bersamin said he worked close enough with Morales to know how quickly she can absorb information.
Morales, a retired SC associate justice, had asked the Supreme Court to stop the Court of Appeals (CA) from blocking a March 11 preventive suspension order she imposed on Binay, whom her office is investigating for alleged anomalies in the construction of the Makati City Hall Building 2.
On March 16, the CA issued a temporary restraining order against Morales’ suspension order. The Ombudsman argued that the CA’s action intruded into her office’s constitutionally mandated independence.
Lawyer Claro Certeza, one of Binay’s counsels, said the mayor’s camp complained to the CA that Morales had committed grave abuse of discretion when she pursued charges against his client.
“Based on [a] timeline, it took the Ombudsman several days only to come up with the joint order authorizing the filing of the case against my client when what had to be reviewed was voluminous documents,” Certeza said.
“This [case involves] a construction project that has spanned close to four or five years, and it was done in stages. And even when we were in the Senate [inquiry into the Makati project], regarding the documents being requested…it is really voluminous and I believe a few days would not give a person a chance to make a very astute decision [concerning the project],” he said.
Bersamin pounced on this assertion.
“You would presume she (Morales) could not have had any basis—factual or otherwise—to issue any preventive suspension order because you were presuming she was a slow reader. That’s what it implied,” Bersamin said.
“We have different levels of intelligence…I have worked with the Ombudsman on a personal [and] direct level. She was my chairman in the [court’s] third division for a long time and I could tell you, and the rest of the public today, she was a fast reader and a fast worker,” he said.
Certeza told the high court that the Ombudsman’s joint order against Binay also directed the suspension of people “who were not even employees of the Makati City [government].”
“That is why, taken all together, our submission is there was something wrong that (sic) the order was issued this way. It appeared haphazard and that is the basis now for concluding grave abuse of discretion,” he said.
Bersamin said the judiciary ascribes “whim, caprice and arbitrariness” to grave abuse of discretion.
But he said the high court had absolved a judge for concluding there was probable cause for murder when he issued an arrest warrant, an hour and a half after the case was raffled to him.
In this case, he said, the judge was also deluged with voluminous documents, but the court ruled that it was presumed that the judge “read everything, so he did not act in grave abuse of discretion.”