Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales. Photo by JHOANNA BALLARAN/INQUIRER.NET
Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales will serve out her full term as mandated by law, President Duterte’s alternative interpretation notwithstanding.
Morales said Section 8(3) of the Ombudsman Act of 1989 allowed her to serve her full term, contrary to Mr. Duterte’s claim that she should only have served the remainder of the unfinished term of her resigned predecessor Merceditas Gutierrez.
The said provision provided that in case of vacancy, “the Overall Deputy shall serve as Acting Ombudsman in a concurrent capacity until a new Ombudsman shall have been appointed for a full term.”
“We are following the law … When the incumbent Ombudsman leaves the office … the Deputy Ombudsman shall be the acting Ombudsman until a new Ombudsman is appointed who shall serve for a full term,” Morales told reporters on the sidelines of the Ramon Magsaysay Award ceremony on Thursday.
Mr. Duterte, in a speech on Tuesday, claimed that Morales’ hold on her position was “precarious.”
He said: “You are supposed to serve the remaining term of the guy who resigned, not to a full term. That is very clear under the law.”
Not selective
Morales, a 2016 Magsaysay awardee, also denied Mr. Duterte’s claims she was a selective Ombudsman. She was just prioritizing high-profile cases as mandated by the Ombudsman Act, she told reporters.
“You know, under the law … we give priority to high-profile cases, high government officials who hold supervisory positions or cases that involve huge amount of money or big property,” she said.
Morales also explained that the pork-barrel scam cases against three former senators—Bong Revilla Jr., Jinggoy Estrada, and Juan Ponce Enrile—would certainly be prioritized because “there is already this testimonial claim against them,” on account of the affidavit of alleged scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.
“That came first, definitely, because you did not have to look hard for evidence on top of what you gathered,” she explained.
Morales also denied criticism that her office was slow to conduct investigations, and even pointed out that she cleared the immense backlog she inherited from previous administrations.
“I inherited more than 19,000 cases dating back as old as 1999, would you believe? A lot have slept. Naturally, we had to attend to them right away, on top of the fact that in the interim, about 35,000 cases were filed,” she said.
“I’m proud to say, as I have said again, our pending [case load] as of December 2016 was more than 6,000 cases,” she added.