Roxas: CA presiding justice has ‘greater interest’ in Meralco case
Aries Rufo, Newsbreak, abs-cbnNEWS.com | 08/19/2008 2:54 PM
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At the rate things are unraveling, the simple case of who has jurisdiction over Meralco is not as simple as it appears to be. Personal relationships of the justices are making the case more controversial.
Justice Vicente Roxas, one of the justices at the center of the alleged bribery scandal in the Court of Appeals, told a Supreme Court-created panel that CA presiding justice Conrado Vasquez Jr. has “greater interest” in the corporate war between the Government Service Insurance System and Lopez family, which should have been a ground for inhibition.
Roxas said Vasquez did not disclose this “interest” to his colleagues when they held their en banc meeting to discuss how to resolve the simmering controversy at that time.
Taking the witness chair for the third day, Roxas said he learned from the column of Malaya publisher Amado “Jake” Macasaet and thru his own sources in the GSIS that Vasquez’s sister and former Presidential Management Staff Secretary Leonora “Lenny” de Jesus, Vasquez’s two daughters, and a niece, are all working at the state pension fund.
Vasquez’s daughter Maria Ruth Almira works at the GSIS corporate secretary’s office while Maria Agnes Rosario works with the dental office, both receiving a salary of P80,000 a month, Roxas said.
De Jesus, on the other hand, is a GSIS consultant earning P200,000 a month while her daughter with the vice-president for treasury office, gets P127,000 a month.
“Before officiating the en banc, he should have announced that his relatives are working with the GSIS,” Roxas said.
In a previous hearing, Vasquez was asked if he had relatives at the GSIS. Vasquez then replied that only his two daughters and a distant relative were employed by GSIS.
Rushed decision
Roxas said Vasquez’s interest in the case was not apparent early on, but he was later convinced that “the PJ (presiding justice) is interested” because of the fact that Vasquez issued a decision that it was the Ninth Division that had jurisdiction of the case on June 22, or a day after the Eighth Division promulgated its decision on the Meralco case.
Vasquez’s decision would, in effect, imply that the Eighth Division’s ruling is not valid.
“The PJ rushed the decision to embarrass the Eighth Division,” Roxas said. The Ninth Division, led by acting chair Justice Jose Sabio and members Justices Myrna Dimaranan-Vidal and Roxas, originally had jurisdiction over the Meralco case. A reorganization of CA members, however, purportedly transferred the case to the Eighth Division where Roxas is now a member. Roxas is the lead writer of the decision which barred the Securities and Exchange Commission from interfering in the corporate squabble.
Cross examined by lawyer Vitaliano Aguirre, counsel for Justice Bienvenido Reyes, chair of the Eighth Division, why Vasquez issued his decision on the issue of jurisdiction considering that the Eighth Division had already promulgated its decision on the Meralco case, Roxas said “it would taint the integrity of the Eighth Division…it would appear like that.”
GSIS counsel in Roxas’s office
Roxas also told the panel chaired by former Justice Carolina Grino-Aquino that GSIS vice-president for legal affairs, Estrella Elamparo, tried to barge into his chamber last May 29.
“Elamparo knew fully well that she is committing a crime by going to my office since GSIS is involved in litigation. She had the gall to say that it was the Meralco lawyers (who met with me) when it was she who tried to,” Roxas told the panel.
In an ambush interview, Elamparo admitted that she was at the office of Roxas at that time, not to talk with the magistrate however, but because she was filing a motion to defer action on the Meralco case.
