Filtered By: Topstories
News

Duterte’s first SONA, one year later: The courts and witness protection


Every State of the Nation Address is both a look back and a look ahead—to the President's accomplishments the previous year, and to what he or she plans to do next.

When President Rodrigo Duterte delivered his first SONA on July 25, 2016, he had only been in office for less than a month. However, many of the issues he talked about were already familiar to Filipinos as being close to his heart, thanks to the presidential campaign and his long tenure as Davao City mayor.

GMA News Online looks at some of the issues he discussed in his first SONA, and what the administration is doing to address them.

 

While the country's judicial system is still perceived in some quarters as slow, both the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice have taken steps during the past year to speed up the disposition of cases.

The SC continued its implementation of its eCourts program, which records all incidents in an information system that shows the age of each case and highlights pending incidents that require action by the judge.

As of December 2016, the SC has deployed eCourts in 197 courts in eight cities nationwide.

By 2017, the project supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will have deployed eCourts in 297 courts in 10 cities, covering 30 percent of the trial courts’ total caseload.

In 2018 and 2019, eCourts will be further rolled out in select courts in the National Capital Region, as well as Central Luzon and Calabarzon, with the support of the European Union (EU).

The eCourts also adopted the Automated Hearing System, which captures in real time every activity in a hearing such as markings of evidence and judges' notes on testimony.

The system allows orders and subpoenas to be immediately released to the parties present in court, thus saving at least one month in waiting time if service is done via snail mail, according to the SC.

To address the rise of new drugs cases, the SC added 240 more courts to its roster of drugs courts, which is now composed of 955 Regional Trial Courts.

“We have yet to see the impact of these new drugs courts, and whether or not they will make a dent on the drugs cases that currently comprise make up 29 percent of trial court dockets nationwide,” Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno said in a speech before officials and members of the Management Association of the Philippines last January 25.

At the DOJ, Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II issued Department Circular No. 3, which contains guidelines for the disposition of cases filed from July 1, 2016 onwards and the delegation of authority to sign or approve decisions and resolutions on behalf of the Secretary of Justice.

Issued on January 4, the circular assigned an Evaluation Committee that shall examine all petitions for review/automatic review/appealed cases filed before the Office of the Secretary from July 1, 2016 onwards, and determine whether each satisfies formal and jurisdictional requirements, as well as whether there are grounds to summarily dismiss or decide on the merits.

All petitions for review/automatic review/appealed cases of the resolutions of the Provincial/City Prosecutors which fall under the jurisdiction of the Regional Trial Court and above shall be assigned to Undersecretaries.

Those that fall under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Trial Court, Municipal Trial Court in Cities or Municipal Trial Court shall be assigned to Assistant Secretaries.

The circular sets deadlines to act on petitions for review.

"[N]on-compliance of prosecutors concerned with the periods provided herein shall be considered as a violation of the Zero Backlog Program and shall merit the imposition of sanctions as provided therein, without prejudice to other administrative liability under Civil Service Laws, Rules and Regulations," the circular stated.

Aguirre took over the DOJ leadership on July 1, 2016.

DOJ data shows that 334,100 (88.5 percent) of 377,533 of filed criminal complaints are resolved. Of these, 283,831 were filed in court during the period January 2016 to December 2016.

Aguirre said this surpassed the target of at least 85 percent disposition or resolution rate.

For the same period, 23,184 convictions were secured by the DOJ.

Aguirre said they recorded a success rate of 76.7 percent convictions out of total convictions and acquittals, and 30.05 percent convictions out of all criminal cases disposed by trial courts.

The figures surpassed 2015 rates: 71.9 percent and 28.6 percent, respectively.

The DOJ received 3,371 complaints for violations of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 from July 2016 to March 2017.

Of this number, 401 complaints (11.89 percent) have been dismissed due to authorities’ failure to safeguard the chain of custody of the seized drugs and violations of the rights of the respondents.

Meanwhile, the department started the operation of the DOJ Frontline Services Center with a soft opening on July 4, 2017 inside the DOJ main office grounds located on Padre Faura St., Manila.

The Center has 15 transaction windows to allow the public immediate access to the DOJ offices such as the National Prosecution Service Docket, Board of Claims, Witness Protection Program, Internal Affairs Unit and Office of the Secretary Docket.

"Since it is still in the soft opening stages, it is trial and error. We hope to fine-tune our operations in time for the formal blessing and launching of the DOJ Frontline Services Center during our DOJ@120 Founding Anniversary Celebrations [in September]," Aguirre said in a statement.

Under the General Appropriations Act of 2017, the DOJ aims to process 17,000 requests for legal services with the goal of acting upon 95 percent of them within 15 working days from receipt.

 

 

With a budget of P236.36 million for this year, the Witness Protection Program under the Department of Justice aims to protect  witnesses in any administrative, criminal and legislative investigation from harm and economic dislocation.

President Duterte, however, saw the need to strengthen the WPP as there have been reports that some witnesses are being bribed, threatened or killed to prevent them from testifying in court.

GMA News Online asked Aguirre through text about the steps being taken by the department to improve the implementation of the WPP pending passage of the law amending Republic Act 6891 or the WPP Law.

The Cabinet official did not respond.

In the 17th Congress, six lawmakers filed bills—one in the Senate and five in the House of Representatives—seeking to improve the WPP Law, which was passed in 1991.

The bills were filed by Senator Joel Villanueva and Representatives Harlin Neil Abayon III, Fredenil Castro, Maximo Rodriguez Jr., Sherwin Tugna, and Carlos Isagani Zarate.

In summary, the bills call for the creation of a Witness Protection Bureau, provision for a separate witness protection program for witnesses of the legislative branch, allowing the change of identity of witnesses, secure housing facility and relocation, perpetuation of testimony and higher penalty for influencing or harassing a witness.

The bills also aim to provide benefits to children of witnesses which will compensate for the prolonged absence of witnesses from their families; provide at least P500,000 as compensation for the family of a witness killed by reason of admission to the WPP; and jail term for a witness who unjustly fails or refuses to cooperate or testify in the investigation or prosecution of a case or who gives false or misleading testimony.

The bills remain pending before the committee level in both chambers.

 

 

In September, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and its corporate arm the Natural Resources Development Corp. (NRDC), and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) inked an agreement to form the Indigenous Peoples Inter-Agency Task Force.

Formally created last December, the task force was in line with the government's mandate to protect the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral domains.

In a press statement last December, the three agencies committed to providing the IPs "cohesive and quality of life, and environmental and social justice" and upholding their self-determination and development.

Among others, the task force is in charge of ensuring the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity within ancestral domains and that the IPs are "not subjected to undue pressure and influence from unscrupulous businessmen or other industries intending to extract natural resources" from their ancestral lands.

The NRDC, meanwhile, shall provide human resources and facilitate capital resources to enable IP communities make optimum use of their land and resources.

As for the government’s peace agenda, the administration conceded that IP concerns should be considered in the talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and in the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) meetings.

Presidential Peace Adviser Jesus Dureza then announced last April the formation of a five-member IP peace panel tasked to collate concerns and recommendations from the IP sector and present them to the peace negotiating table with the NDFP and deliberations of the BTC.

The panel is composed of NCIP Chairperson Leonor Oralde-Quintayo, former NCIP Chairperson Reuben Dasay Lingating, NCIP Commissioner Era Espana, NAPC-IP Sectoral Council Representative Judith Maranes and ARMM Deputy Governor for IPs, Deonato Mokudef.

According to Dureza, the panel was to provide input regarding the proposed bilateral ceasefire between the government and communist rebels and the Comprehensive Agreement on Socio-Economic Reforms (CASER) and provide comments on the draft law to implement the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro (CAB).

On Monday, the new draft for the Bangsamoro Basic Law was submitted to Duterte by Moro Islamic Liberation Front chairman Ghadzali Jaafar. The President said he will certify the bill as urgent.

"I’m committed to...what we call the Bangsamoro nation," he said. — BM, GMA News

LOADING CONTENT