MANILA — Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin has instructed Court Administrator Midas Marquez to initiate moves to reform the judiciary starting with the head magistrate’s home province, Abra.
“I directed (Marquez) to start with (my) home province of Abra. That is a marching order… no matter if they are my relatives or not,” Bersamin said in a recent speech.
Bersamin conceded that the campaign against corruption in the judiciary should start in first-level courts, noting that the public perception is still that the justice system is skewed in favor of the elite.
“Those judges and employees in the provinces who have contributed to this wrong perception about the judiciary will have to go,” the chief justice warned, underscoring a need to “purge the judiciary of misfits and scalawags and enforce the rules of discipline.”
Bersamin has set the anti-corruption drive as one of his priorities in his one-year tenure in the top judicial post.
He also vowed to “institutionalize changes that are designed to expedite the administration of justice.”
Bersamin is a brother of former governor Eustaquio Bersamin and the late former representative Luis “Chito” Bersamin.
