Chief magistrate seeks hike in budget for judiciary

The country’s chief magistrate has sought for a higher budgetary allocation to more effectively implement crucial reform initiatives that will enable the country’s judiciary system to provide the “gold standard” for civil service.

Speaking at special joint forum hosted by the Makati Business Club and the Judicial Reform Initiative Thursday, Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno noted that while the judiciary was open to partnerships, having a higher budgetary allocation was her first preference as a way to address the judiciary’s infrastructure needs, and to further modernize the country’s justice system.

The judiciary, however, had managed to get only a 0.778 percent share of the 2015 national budget of P2.6 trillion, which was far from the 1.25 percent share they had sought.

We would rather “that the court be spared from looking at terms of partnership with the private sector because this is going to be difficult for us. If we can avoid any conflict of interest in any situation, we should. My call is for the experts in government, especially the economic managers and infrastructure experts, to try to suggest how we can build our court houses under the control of the Supreme Court. But the financing is something they should look at because that’s not our field of expertise,” Sereno explained.

“The judiciary cannot accept direct assistance from the business community. If there is going to be such an assistance, it has to be designed in a way that’s not going to put us in a difficult situation. But we’re open to help—that’s a given. So it’s just about designing the relationship between those who want to help and the institutions that they will help that will need careful study,” she further said.

But what the business community can do, according to Sereno, is to support these reforms and the growing calls to have a modern justice system in place.

“I am happy that many of you have signified support for judicial reform and for the necessary budget to sustain it. Congress, for the first time in history, increased by more than P700 million the amount that the executive (branch) had recommended for the judiciary. What I ask from you now is support for a need to build our own modern soft and hard infrastructure for justice. I ask you to join our call for a modern judiciary, a modern justice system. It must be a system that is intelligent, dignified, serious and efficient. It should be one that speaks of the high value that the Filipino places on a regime of governance,” Sereno said.

“To invest in the judiciary is not a losing proposition. Any one who invests in justice, any effort expended in making the system work, in bringing about judicial reform, is an investment in Filipino lives. It is an investment in a better future for our people.… What is a nation without justice for its people,” she further noted.

These reforms are expected to see reductions in trial time to about 90 days from three to five years under the continuous trial system; easing the congestion at the dockets and courts; implementation of “breakthrough” model rules; improving hard infrastructure, that will call for the construction of energy efficient, and disaster proof and environmentally sound court houses, among others.