My opinion

By Raissa Robles

Eleven months after writing a court decision favoring Imelda and Bongbong Marcos, this top court judge personally administered the oath of office to the Marcos duo.

Supreme Court associate justice Diosdado Peralta, who wrote a decision 11 months ago favoring the Marcoses, recently administered their oaths of office

What’s wrong with this picture, you might ask.

Well, in the Philippine cultural context, the man who administers the oath of office to an elected official somehow acquires a bond with that official. It’s like choosing your “ninong” (sponsor) to your wedding.

True, court officials routinely adminster the oaths of office to elected officials. But in this particular case, Supreme Court associate justice Diosdado Peralta was the ponente in a landmark decision that favored the Marcoses.

In this case, isn’t an associate justice of the Supreme Court supposed to keep at arm’s length from those with  pending suits before the High Court; or whose case he had just cast a vote on and written the decision on; and whom he knows will most likely be the subject of further suits before the same court?

In August last year, Justice Peralta penned a landmark decision involving a long-pending Marcos case. The decision made both Imelda and Bongbong – the very same duo whom he recently swore into office – as executors of the last will and testament of Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos is the same man  whom the court previously said had accumulated a massive amount of ill-gotten wealth.

We don’t know how much is involved under this last will, but the Marcoses are claiming that billions of pesos worth of properties were left by the dictator to them.

In the August 2009 decision penned by Justice Peralta, he also sustained the acquittal of Bongbong Marcos for violating Section 50 of the Internal Reveneue Code.

But Peralta  “sustained his (Bongbong’s) conviction for all the four charges for violation of Section 45″ of the Internal Revenue Code.

In that decision, Justice Peralta wrote that the Court of Tax Appeals:

acquitted respondent Ferdinand Marcos II of all the four charges for violation of Section 50 and sustained his conviction for all the four charges for violation of Section 45. It, however, bears to stress, that the CA only ordered respondent Marcos II to pay a fine for his failure to file his income tax return. Moreover, and as admitted by petitioner, said decision is still pending appeal.

Let’s repeat what Justice Peralta wrote:

Moreover, and as admitted by petitioner, said decision is still pending appeal.

This means Bongbong Marcos still has four pending tax cases where he was convicted, but he is fighting these convictions. He will be the first senator to occupy that august chamber and be called “Honorable” despite four pending tax cases.

I tried to reach the Supreme Court and Justice Peralta yesterday and today to find out why he made this sudden turnaround but no one was answering the phones.

Justice Peralta’s reversal of attitude  in the case of the Marcoses is puzzling because when he was with the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan he expressly inhibited himself from hearing a Marcos case to avoid any conflict of interest.

He was the Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice and First Division chair then, but he excused himself saying he could not be involved in hearing the case on the US$35 million alleged Marcos ill-gotten wealth still deposited in a New York bank to this day because his own wife, Court of Appeals Associate Justice Fernanda Lampas Peralta, used to be Ferdinand Marcos’ assistant solicitor general.

Will Justice Peralta now inhibit himself from all future Marcos cases, now that he has sworn Imelda and Bongbong Marcos into power?