Pathetic

First, the denial by way of a charge of fraud. “That press release is now turning out to be fake,” Supreme Court spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez said, referring to the aide-memoire the World Bank had prepared, criticizing irregular procurements and disbursements made by the Court under a $21.9-million loan released in 2003, which was intended to fund programs for judicial reform.

Was it? The WB itself said it had not released the report, fueling talk that it was a hoax and merely the latest broadside meant to discredit Chief Justice Renato Corona. However, the WB statement did not deny the report’s contents, only its provenance. A copy of the aide-memoire had been sent to news organizations from an e-mail account the WB said wasn’t its own. Eventually, the bank did confirm that it had conducted a review of the high court’s implementation of the loan program, and that a report on it had been submitted on Dec. 28, 2011, to the Court, with copies furnished to relevant government agencies such as the Department of Finance, the National Economic and Development Authority and the Department of Budget and Management. That report and the leaked document happened to be identical. So, it was not fake.

Moreover, the aide-memoire was submitted to the Court in late December 2011, or about two weeks before its public disclosure. How long does it take the court administrator to read a report like it—which, though couched in professional language, contains explosive charges of dubious, incompetent administration, among them “ineligible payments” of $199,900 that the Court must now refund, the program’s progress “rated unsatisfactory,” the “fiduciary environment… so deteriorated” it is now considered “high-risk,” and that the project financial statements “can no longer be relied upon”? Though not named, Marquez himself was singled out by the report for his conflict-of-interest roles as concurrent court administrator, head of the Public Information Office and chair of the bids and awards committee, an arrangement that has “created a breakdown of the control environment, increased fiduciary and reputation risks, and led to irregular/inappropriate procurement and expenditure decisions.”

A report that damns one’s person and position so strongly would be read immediately by that person, correct? In Marquez’s case, apparently not. For, while the Court has had a copy of the aide-memoire since late December 2011, when asked to comment about it in the second week of January this year, Marquez instead impugned the report by claiming it was bogus. A simple comparison of the leaked document and the copy presumably occupying pride of place on his desk would have told him it was the same banana. But he chose to be dishonest about it, while assuring the nation that “the Court has been and continues to be transparent and vigilant in its financial affairs.”

With the “fake” canard becoming unusable, Marquez took another tack, denouncing its disclosure as improper. “The aide-memoire is still confidential and the findings therein have yet to be confirmed,” he protested. Translation: the high court, the one that “continues to be transparent and vigilant in its financial affairs,” cannot be subject to the lawful, routine scrutiny the rest of the government is subject to, as the Court itself has ruled many times. From barring the release of judges and justices’ statements of assets, liabilities and net worth to now taking umbrage at a leak that asks some hard questions, the judiciary seems steeped in its own brand of omerta. How inconvenient, then, to have to deal with a wayward but unassailable brief that all but shatters that culture of secrecy.

Next, enter the minor injury defense. The $199,900 “ineligible” transactions, said Marquez, represented “only 0.75 percent of the loan.” But where did the money go? And isn’t stealing the same under the law, whatever amount gets pilfered? Worse, must the Supreme Court now be defended on these pathetic grounds?

“Chief Justice Corona is just inheriting the project,” Marquez tried again. True, but the irregularities the World Bank noted began only in 2010, when Corona was already the Chief Justice.

Finally, down on his last card, Marquez sought a wholesale change of topic. The Aquino administration, he fumed, has “so many concerns to address, instead of focusing their attention on the judiciary. There’s continuous hike in oil prices. We saw transport groups complaining. The victims of ‘Sendong’ still don’t have their houses to live in.”

Non sequitur. There ought to be a law against it.