Judiciary money not going to hiring of new judges

The Supreme Court’s failure to fill vacancies has resulted in the growing number of pending court cases, according to Senate finance committee chairman Franklin Drilon.. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The continuously burgeoning number of court cases pending throughout the country is due in part to the Supreme Court’s refusal to fill vacancies in the judicial system.

This Senate finance committee chairman Franklin Drilon found out after making an initial study of the Supreme Court’s proposed P5.3-billion budget for 2013. For the entire judiciary, Congress is being asked for P17.7 billion for next year.

Supreme Court Administrator Midas Marquez said the 377,000 cases pending in regional trial courts throughout the country in 2010 had grown to 388,000 as of last year.

Meanwhile, the 82,000 cases awaiting decisions in metropolitan trial courts in 2010 now number 82,664.

“The very slow pace of dispensing justice in our country continues to be a challenge to the judiciary, and the very slow delivery of justice is attributed to the vast number of vacancies that are now in the judicial system,” observed Drilon.

For instance, he said, in January 2012 the judiciary had 591 vacancies for various posts.

“This is more than the number of vacancies pending as of December 2010, which was 553. It’s even growing. This means that these positions are not being filled notwithstanding the fact that a total of P1.820 billion was allocated in the 2012 budget for unfilled positions for unorganized courts and unfilled vacancies for organized courts,” the senator said.

This led Drilon to conclude that the judiciary’s failure to improve on its disposition of cases “is directly attributable to the failure of the Supreme Court to fill vacancies in the courts, notwithstanding adequate funds that had been provided them.”

Representatives of the Supreme Court told the senators at the budget hearing that the 2012 allocation for the vacancies was used to pay the “fringe benefits and bonuses” of personnel and that it amounted exactly to the budget allocated for the unfilled positions.

Of the amount, P980 million went to bonuses and a “portion” of P2.2 million to pay casual employees.

Drilon told reporters that Marquez and the other representatives of the judiciary were “not prepared to explain” where the balance of P841.1 million went.

“The point is this was not spent to hire judges, which is so essential to have a faster disposition of cases,” he said.

“We challenge the Supreme Court (to) be more innovative and attentive to the filling of vacancies because this affects the backlog of court cases,” the senator added.