“This is not the first time.”
Outgoing Malabon City Mayor Antolin Oreta III and his wife Melissa Sison Oreta, a professional cook, were sued before the Office of the Ombudsman last month by a certain Gary Santos Garcia, a resident of the city.
According to Garcia, the Oreta spouses violated the law against nepotism, or the appointment of one’s close relatives to positions in the government; Republic Act No. 3019, or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act; and Republic Act No. 6713, or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officers and Employees.
Garcia’s complaint stems from the recent appointment of Melissa Oreta to the post of President of the City of Malabon University (CMU), which is financed by the Malabon City government, which is headed by her husband, Mayor Oreta.
This is not the first time the Oreta spouses have been sued.
Last December 2021, Atty. Ramon Maronilla, the retired CMU President, sued the Oreta spouses before the Regional Trial Court of San Juan City, Metro Manila, to demand payment of Maronilla’s accrued leave benefits.
Like the Garcia complaint, the Maronilla case is currently under litigation.
The sub judice rule prohibits press commentary on civil or criminal cases pending in a court of law. It does not cover cases pending before an administrative agency like the Office of the Ombudsman, or the Commission on Elections.
Moreover, the sub judice rule only prohibits press commentary on pending litigation. It does not prohibit the press from reporting on the actual existence of the pending case; when the case was filed; who the parties are; the issues being litigated; the arguments, laws and evidence cited or presented by the parties; and whatever it is the court concerned has so far ordered or resolved.
That clarification notwithstanding, I have been advised not to comment on the Garcia case, even though it is not covered by the sub judice rule.
Actually, the sub judice rule is not a law, but an antequated rule first established by Philippine jurisprudence almost a century ago. It is purportedly designed to insulate judges and justices from getting influenced by whatever they may read in the newspapers.
The late Supreme Court Chief Justice Manuel Moran believed the sub judice rule is both impractical and an emasculation of press freedom. Moran emphasized that there is essentially nothing wrong about press commentaries on pending litigations, because if a judge or justice knows the law and jurisprudence, and is honest and upright, not even all the press commentaries in the world can unduly influence him.
In fact, if a judge or justice actually gets to read what the press thinks about a certain pending case, the press commentary can actually help the judge or justice better understand the issues in the pending case.
Press commentaries on pending court litigations enlighten the people about the justice system. In turn, a public enlightened about a pending court litigation is the best check against court rulings arrived at by incompetent judges of justices, or decisions bought by unscrupulous litigants from corrupt jurists.
As experts on the Constitution and press freedom correctly point out, there should be more sunshine, and less darkness, so to speak, on all matters of government activity and public interest, which necessarily includes court litigations.
Restated, the more a judge or a justice gets to read in the newspapers what the press and the public think, correctly or incorrectly, about a case pending before his court, the better will be the chances that the ruling of the judge or justice will be judiciously arrived at.
At the end of the day, the question to ask is, “Why should a competent and honest judge or justice be afraid of what he may read in a newspaper about a case pending in his court?” It simply doesn’t make sense to ban press commentaries on pending litigation.
From that perspective, it’s obvious that the sub judice rule is not only outdated; it is impractical and unnecessary, and smacks of an unconstitutional restriction on press freedom.
I am surprised and disturbed that media outlets and bar associations are not doing anything about the sub judice rule.
A certain anti-administration online news outlet which thinks highly of itself should get off its self-constructed pedestal and do something about the threat to press freedom the sub judice rule continuously poses.
For the past several years, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) has been praising itself in its many anti-administration press releases.
Worse, some ex-presidents of the Philippine Bar Association (PBA) announced their support for that inutile Leni Robredo who has been drooling for the presidency since 2016.
Instead of engaging in partisan politics, the moribund IBP and the useless PBA should make themselves relevant by urging the Supreme Court to abandon the antiquated sub judice rule.