A Kabaleyan’s Thoughts…
What’s wrong with the judiciary?
By Ulysses Raciles Butuyan
TO be sure, some things are wrong with the judiciary but, for now, this writing focuses only on one.
Time and again a judge or high magistrate is addressed as an “attorney.” Even the Chief Justice is sometimes mistaken for the Secretary of Justice and vice versa, while the Supreme Court is often perceived as an adjunct of the Department of Justice.
On a bus one evening, this writer was greeted “Hi, fiscal!” When the necessity came for him to inform the inquisitive passenger that he was actually a judge, the latter apologized profusely, saying “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir. All along I thought you have already been promoted!”
It is all too clear that in the eyes of some, if not many, judges, justices and the entire judiciary suffer from identity crisis. Why so? Well, maybe because one does not readily call an apple an apple if it looks more like a turnip.
To some judges, paying courtesy calls to the newly elected local mayors or governors is a duty. Invariably, the local government officers reciprocate with mesmerizing promises of material and financial support, aware that among the executive, legislative and judicial officers in government judges are the most economically marginalized. Bluntly put, apples are pathetically viewed as turnips.
It is time to stop the dependence of the judiciary on local government handouts to underwrite their needs in attending seminars, conventions and other official functions venued outside their stations. The more judges and court personnel are beholden to local executives – an inappropriate consequence of such dependency, the more the judiciary looks like a cartload of turnips.
The special allowances that the judiciary has so far managed to augment the miserly salaries of judges and personnel are a pittance, compared to those enjoyed by the executive and legislative departments, and the judiciary has no cause to complain. After all, the pork barrel is not supposed to roll beyond the executive and legislative cellars of power and pelf.
Yet, come to think of it: judges and justices are, first and foremost, lawyers, while all that Constitutionally qualifies one to become a member of Congress that enacts laws, and a President who approves them and who appoints officers of the courts that interpret and apply them, is a pedestrian ability to read and write. They need not even have to be as learned as repeat bar flunkers!
Let the apples shine and be looked up to as apples, instead of they being looked down and trampled upon by the real turnips.
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