Malaya (08.22.08)
“Justice Roxas . . . has two pending administrative cases before the Supreme Court — one for ‘gross ignorance’ of the law for ruling on a withdrawn complaint.”
by Ducky Paredes
At last, the Supreme Court Panel investigating the Court of Appeals is getting somewhere. Court of Appeals (CA) Justice Vicente Roxas, the ponente of the controversial decision on the Meralco-GSIS case in favor of the Lopez-controlled firm, is finding himself in water that is getting deeper and hotter by the day.
This Justice was on attack mode for several days, insinuating that CA Presiding Justice Conrado Vasquez had shown a leaning towards the GSIS (which is exactly the same line that we have been hearing from Meralco backers). Roxas is now finding out that the Supreme Court panel investigating the brouhaha has seen through his allegations.
Vasquez has some relatives employed by the GSIS. However, Roxas’ claim that, therefore, Vasquez leaned towards GSIS has been found to be untrue. Actually, Vasquez denied a GSIS petition for the case to be re-raffled after it was assigned to Roxas.
The GSIS asked for the re-raffle because it had questions about the integrity of Justice Roxas who has two pending administrative cases before the Supreme Court — one for “gross ignorance” of the law for ruling on a withdrawn complaint.
So, how can Roxas accuse Vasquez of lack of impartiality when he thumbed down the GSIS request? Clearly, Vasquez could have given in to the GSIS request which was backed up by facts and the CA’s records itself.
Roxas’ also attacked a CA member, who is his senior. Roxas insinuated that Justice Jose Sabio Jr., was biased against Meralco. But, how can this be when Sabio signed the temporary restraining order (TRO) that Meralco asked of the CA?
Justice Sabio admitted that his elder brother, PCCG chair Camilo Sabio called him about the Meralco case but that was, according to the affidavit of the justice, just to impress on him the “rightness” of the SEC, GSIS position. While it may have been wrong for his brother t call the justice and for the justice to discuss the case with his kuya, still did Justice Sabio rule in favor of the GSIS just because his brother called? No. Justice Sabio told his brother that he would go by the dictates of his conscience. He then signed the TRO sought by Meralco.
In fact, if there’s anyone who showed undue interest in the GSIS-Meralco case, it gas to be Justice Roxas for as Sabio himself testified, Roxas, against what is normal in the CA, personally brought before Sabio the Meralco TRO for his signature.
Now, is it any wonder that the SC panel, specifically its members retired SC justices Flerida Ruth Romero and Jose Callejo, found a lot of loose ends in the testimony of Justice Roxas.
Roxas, as we know by now, received a scolding from Justices Romero and Callejo. Romero took issue with Justice Roxas for disrespecting Presiding Justice Vasquez by not informing the latter that he had already promulgated a decision on the GSIS-Meralco case on July 23, ahead of the legal opinion Roxas and another justice, Bienvenido Reyes, themselves had asked Vasquez to make.
That legal opinion by Vasquez, released on July 24, said that the CA Special 9th Division (Sabio) and not the CA 8th to which Roxas brought his ponencia for signing, should have ruled on the case.
Of course, because a ruling by Roxas had been promulgated before Vasquez’s ruling, the Presiding Justice’s ruling turned out to be moot – pointless and useless.
Roxas may have expected the Vasquez decision that the CA 9th was the rightful promulgator as per the internal rules of the CA. Thus, he pre-empted the presiding justice.
Callejo rebuked Roxas for bringing the case to the 8th, while allowing a member of the 9th, Justice Myrna Vidal, to read his unpromulgated decision and even to affix her signature on the document.
Callejo said that was a breach of confidentiality on the part of Roxas, whom he also chided for not asking both Reyes and Sabio to inhibit themselves in lieu of their tug-of-war for the chairmanship of the CA Special 9th.
The retired SC justice said Roxas’ excuse that Sabio and Reyes were his seniors was a feeble one. He reminded Roxas that a CA magistrate should speak his mind when he thinks he’s right and his seniors are wrong.
While the circumstances of Roxas’ promulgation was highly controversial, so is the ponencia itself, including its claim that the GSIS committed forum shopping and that the SEC had no authority to act on the GSIS complaint against Meralco.
There was no forum shopping. The GSIS withdrew the case it filed before it petitioned the SEC to act on the use by Lopez-controlled Meralco of un-validated proxy votes in the company’s last board election.
Roxas’ ponencia was a dubious first in Philippine legal history in that it ruled on a case not pending before it, when it dismissed the GSIS complaint pending before the SEC.
The GSIS did not question the election itself as the GSIS participated in that election. What the GSIS questioned was the use of the un-validated proxy votes, for which the SEC had issued a cease and desist order (CDO) which the Lopez minions in Meralco so blatantly defied, acting as if they considered themselves above the law.
As a regulatory agency tasked to enforce the Securities Code of the Philippines, the SEC, in issuing the CDO and the show-cause order on Meralco, merely exercised its responsibility in view of the complaint against the un-validated proxies, their non-submission within the deadline, and the suspicious ascension of alleged Lopez lackey, Anthony Rosete, as acting Meralco corporate secretary in charge of the election.
Justices Bruselas and Reyes have a lot of explaining to do, too, over their hasty signing of Roxas’ ponencia as members of the CA 8th, when that particular division did not hold a single deliberation on the case.
Considering the voluminous documents of the case, there was just no way that Reyes and Bruselas read most of the documents to make an intelligent judgment.
They must have made their decision in the manner often described as “without thinking.”
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Oops! Errors abound.
The Manila-Bicol Tournament at Navy and the FPASGI Fun Tournament at Capitol are on Friday, August 29th, not the 28th, which is a Thursday.
Leon Chua’s schooling was inadvertently shortened. His PhD was not at the MIT in Massachusetts. Here is the full line-up: BS Electrical Engineering, Mapua Institute of Technology (1959); MS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1961); PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1964); Professor, Purdue University (1964-70); Professor: University of California at Berkeley (1971-present).
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hvp 08.21.08)
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