Associate Justice Martires: File admin cases vs ‘negligent’ SC personnel

Without naming any official, Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Samuel Martires urged the families of judges and justices who became victims of delay in the high court’s decision on retirement benefits, to file cases against “negligent” court officials who sat on their petition.

Martires made this remark on Monday, as he testified before the House justice committee hearing on the impeachment complaint filed against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.

The hearing is being conducted to determine whether there was probable cause to impeach the country’s top magistrate.

Martires was invited to shed light on the two-year delay in the release of retirement and survivorship benefits for former justices and judges, and their spouses. The case was raffled to Martires in 2017.

In previous hearings, Court Administrator Midas Marquez said that the creation of a committee and later, technical working groups by Sereno and two other justices, caused delays in the release of benefits to justices and judges and their surviving spouses and relatives.

“Why don’t you just file administrative cases against any personnel of Supreme Court who slept on his or her job, who was negligent?” Martires said during the hearing.

“Panahon na siguro para linisin natin hindi lang ang ehekutibo o legislatibo but including the juridiciary. We keep on hearing justices being corrupt… pero wala, puro takot,” he said.

Filing cases against erring court personnel, according to Martires, was for the SC to “weed out incompetent or negligent employees.”

A total of 29 petitions for retirement and survivorship benefits had been pending under the committee since 2014. These were only settled after the special committee submitted two memoranda to the SC en banc in 2017.            /kga