WITHOUT INCENTIVES AND SECURITY, JUDGES WON'T GO TO SULU

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today pressed for the grant of a special package of incentives to judges assigned to Sulu to encourage them to hold office and conduct court hearings in the strife-torn province and to solve court vacancies.

Pimentel urged the Supreme Court and the Court Administrator to endorse a pending legislative measure doubling the salaries and allowances and providing adequate security to judges at the expense of the government in Sulu so that appropriate funding can be included in the 2010 national budget.

Without such incentives, he said judges would shy away from being assigned to Sulu, depriving the people of the means for the redress of grievances and dispensation of justice.

Not a single municipal trial court is operating in the 18 municipalities in Sulu, Pimentel deplored. And although the multi-island southernmost province is entitled to three regional trial courts, only one is operating and the judge prefers to hold sessions in Zamboanga City in the main island of Mindanao, instead of Jolo. There is only one municipal trial court in Sulu proposed for filling up under the existing judiciary organization.

The minority leader said such an abnormal situation should not be tolerated because it has only aggravated the peace and order problems there.

"It is about time that we provide the Moro people of Sulu an alternative to the use of the gun as the arbiter of their conflicts because without the courts, then how will they settle their differences?" the senator from Mindanao said.

Under a bill filed by Pimentel, the salaries and allowances for judges assigned to Sulu and other equally hazardous area will be doubled. In addition, the judges shall be provided security detail of not less than five but not more than seven police officers or members of the armed forces to be paid by government fund.

Pimentel noted that the Senate committee on justice and human rights, chaired by Sen. Francis Escudero, and the committee on finance, chaired by Sen. Edgardo Angara, have submitted a committee report which, among others, seeks to create another regional trial court for Sulu even if two existing salas remain vacant for lack of applicants.

He warned that there will be no takers for the position of RTC judges in the province unless they are entitled to a reasonable but attractive set of incentives. He said the grant of hazard pay for judges in high-risk areas, as already being done, would simply not suffice to address the peculiar problem of lack of working courts in Sulu.

"If a judge of a municipal court in Sulu will receive the same amount that judges elsewhere in the country occupying the same level of jurisdiction would receive, then nobody would take up the position of municipal court in Sulu, because of the instability of the province and the tendency of people to resort to violence," he said.

Pimentel likewise expressed dismay that the committee report does not include the creation of new municipal courts in Sulu ostensibly because there are not that many cases to take care of. "Have the judicial authorities even bothered to find out why that is the situation in Sulu?" he asked.

He challenged the judicial authorities to put their heads together and look for a way in solving the judicial vacuum in the insurgency-wracked province.

"I am calling on the Supreme Court and the Court Administrator to look into the problem very seriously because without the courts, that contributes to the instability of the country and affects the insurgency, the secessionist movement and the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group," Pimentel said.

"It also makes one wonder," he said, if Sulu can legitimately be considered a part of the Republic if it does not a working judiciary?"