Page 25 - LM Confidential Issue November 2014

Spotlight
OVERHAUL
Slow judicial
system
MANILA - Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno is overhauling the notoriously slow judicial system to speed up the resolution of cases from years to mere days.
To achieve this, Sereno said she would hire more trial court judges, hasten legal procedures and press authorities to enforce court rulings to clear a backlog that burdens judges with as many as 4,000 cases at a time.
“We want to say that in the PH, it’s no longer justice delayed and therefore justice denied,” Sereno, 54, said.
“We want people to experience justice in real time, justice on time,” said Sereno, the country’s first female chief justice and youngest to be named to the post.
Twenty-seven courts in the capital are pilot-testing a system in which “small” cases such as drug peddling are decided in four days, she said.
Some of the reforms are as simple as hearing cases more often and printing and releasing rulings on the same day to avoid delays that result in cases dragging for years, even decades, she added.
The PH justice system has long been notorious for its slow pace in dealing with simple cases that drag for years and the accused time in jail longer than necessary crowding detention facilities.
The slow grind of justice has taken its toll on the trial of the country’s worst political massacre – the Maguindanao massacre – where 58 persons were killed mostly journalists in November, 2009.
Sereno said the case, which grabbed international attention and became a symbol of the impunity that critics say powerful figures enjoy in the PH might not be decided before President Aquino steps down in mid-2016.
“With the way things are going, I don’t think anyone can make this kind of promise,” Sereno said.
The court has yet to start the main trial of the accused – members of a powerful political clan in Maguindanao who allegedly carried out the killing to prevent a rival from contesting the post of an ally.
Aerial View of Luneta, 1960’s
Puzzle
Crossword
Leaders
Senator Dennis Patterson, Dr. Solon Guzman, Senator Tobias Enverga and journalist Ace Alvarez pose at senator Enverga’s daughter Raocel’s 25th birthday.
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NOVEMBER 2014
L. M. Confidential
25