Senator-elect Rafael Tulfo disclosed on Sunday the broad strokes and key pillars of his legislative agenda for the judiciary.
He said the courts are in urgent need of improvement in their physical facilities, technologies, and number of personnel in actual positions filled.
He noted that for 2022, “the Supreme Court and the Lower Courts have a budget of P39.7 billion. This does not yet include the allocations for the Court of Appeals, Court of Tax Appeals, the Sandiganbayan, and the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.”
In 2021, the Supreme Court originally proposed a budget of P67.28 billion but the Department of Budget and Management slashed it to P44.98 billion because of DBM budget ceiling parameters. Later, Congress increased the figure to P45.31 billion.
“My current thinking on this matter is this: When the judiciary, a co-equal branch of government, asks for P67.28 billion, the DBM should give the Judiciary the benefit of the doubt, cast aside its budget ceiling formula, and then sit down with the judiciary and Congress to work on a middle ground,” Tulfo said.
“Slashing the original budget request by P22.3 billion does not only seem disrespectful, but there is inevitable denial of public service to Filipino citizens which is the greater injustice,” he added.
Tulfo said his “personal working goal is to push for an increase of at least P6.25 billion so that the first-level courts, second-level courts, and Supreme Court will have P46 billion in 2023 because they are the courts most in need of added resources.”
First-level and second-level courts, also known as the municipal trial courts, municipal circuit trial courts, and metropolitan trial courts, are where most of the pending cases are, Tulfo said.
In the 2020 annual report of the Supreme Court, the RTCs had 635,690 total cases and 215,413 of them were disposed of, for a disposition rate of 34 percent. In the first-level courts, there were 171,382 pending cases, 208,867 case inflow, and 191,597 in decided and archived cases.
“For the appellate courts and PET, a ballpark figure of P9 billion I think would be fair considering the high importance of their pending cases and to help expedite the disposition of those cases because justice delayed is justice denied,” he said.
“If I am able to convince my colleagues in the 19th Congress, my work-in-progress plan would give the Supreme Court at least P55 billion in 2023 which is much closer to what they asked for in their original budget proposal for 2022,” Tulfo added.