(First of two parts)

In the aftermath of the cheating controversy in the 2004 presidential elections, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo thanked the people who helped her erase any lingering doubt on the legitimacy of her victory and that of her vice president, Noli de Castro.

One of them was Agnes Devanadera whom she relied upon to check the votes. “The ballots used and election returns canvassed for the vice president were the same ballots and election returns for the president. Thus, aside from observing Noli's vote -- and Agnes Devanadera can tell you -- our party lawyers are doing the same also, looking at the votes for the presidential candidates,” Arroyo said during the Lakas-CMD national directorate meeting in January 2006.

At the time, Devandera was government corporate counsel.

Today, Justice Secretary Devanadera is a top contender for the Supreme Court which has to fill in two more vacancies till the end of the year. Justice Leonardo Quisumbing retired on November 6, while Justice Minita Nazario is scheduled to retire on December 5.

For the first time, the Supreme Court picked Devanadera as their top choice for a new SC jurist. The Judicial and Bar Council is expected to decide on their shortlist next week.

For Supreme Court watchdogs, Devanadera’s imprint on the victory of Arroyo in one of the most contentious presidential polls in recent Philippine history could only raise questions on her independence as a possible member of the High Tribunal – an observation which Devanadera says is unmerited.

Devanadera, as quoted in the Filipino-American community newspaper Asian Journal in February 2009, deplored that her chances to join the Supreme Court are judged by her closeness to the president and not on her capacity and integrity. It is not her fault, she said, that she enjoys friendship with the president, who, in the past, has also appointed her to key positions.

What seems to be the only obstacle to her appointment is her string of cases pending with the Ombudsman. Devanadera actually withdrew her application for the post vacated by Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago on October 5 following the non-resolution of these cases.

Devanadera recently wrote the JBC and asked them to reconsider her application, saying that the cases against her are without merit and are meant to harass her.

We checked the status of Devanadera’s cases with the Ombudsman’s legal office but they refused to give us the information due to their confidentiality rule.

“It is the policy of the Office of the Ombudsman that records of a case shall be kept confidential from third persons with the exception of the parties of their authorized representatives,” Assistant Ombudsman Dina Teñala told us in her response dated October 8, 2009.

What they only provided us is the summary of the case against Devanadera which has already been dismissed in 2006. The case was filed by labor lawyer Genaro Bautista, who questioned the compromise agreement Devanadera broached with the employees of the Manila Metropolitan Waterworks System.

Bautista said that Devanadera should not have approved the agreement as there was a pending case then at the Supreme Court involving the claims of MWSS employees (represented by Bautista) for cost-of-living allowance.

Another compromise agreement could put Devanadera in hot water in her bid for the Supreme Court. Luis Sison, former president of the Philippine National Construction Corp. (PNCC), wrote the JBC opposing Devanadera’s application because she approved  the P6-billion compromise agreement between the PNCC and the British lending firm Radstock Securities Limited in 2006.

Under the compromise agreement, the PNCC will pay Radstock P6 billion for its debt incurred 26 years ago. PNCC inherited the debt from its predecessor, the Construction Development Corp. of the Philippines, which owed Radstock’s precursor Marubeni Corporation P10.74 billion in obligations for a loan agreement. Critics slammed the compromise deal as it will bankrupt PNCC and described it as one of the largest “plunder cases” in the Arroyo administration.

Qualified

If academic credentials and work background would be the sole yardstick for SC contenders, Devanadera would be well qualified. She has a bachelor’s degree in commerce, major in accounting, from St. Paul’s Manila and completed her law studies in Ateneo de Manila University. She passed the bar in 1978 with a grade of 79 percent.

She also qualified for the New York State bar just like Justice Renato Corona. Devanadera told us that she initially planned to put up a firm in New York. “I already had a partner. We were ready to come up with a corporation,” she told us in a phone interview. But then martial law broke out in the Philippines, and she decided to come home.

She worked with her Ateneo law professor Hernando Perez at Balgos and Perez law offices, first as a junior associate then as managing partner.

Devanadera recalled that one of the memorable cases she handled as a young lawyer included the corporate tussle between John Gokongwei and San Miguel Corp. Gokongwei, with 4 percent share in SMC stocks, wanted to have a seat at the SMC board of directors.

The SMC, however, headed by Andres Soriano, pointed out that Gokongwei has competing business interests because he heads one of SMC’s biggest rivals, the CFC Corp. and Universal Robina Corp. Devanadera, then an assistant lawyer for Gokongwei’s camp, remarked that she will always remember that case even if they did not win it because “it was a landmark case” involving intra-corporate disputes.

The mayor

Devanadera has donned many hats throughout her career and one of the most important is that of a politician.

In 1988, she ran for mayor in Sampaloc, Quezon, and won. She stayed at the post until 1998. “It was payback time,” she said when asked why she sought public office.

She was earning well as managing partner at the firm but opted to run even if “the salary of a janitor at the law firm then was higher than the mayor’s,” because according to her, “it was time for public service.”

Politics runs in Devanadera’s blood. Her father previously served as mayor of Sampaloc; her brother is now the incumbent mayor.

Even if she lost in the gubernatorial elections in 1998 to her fierce rival Willie Enverga, she still had considerable political clout for she was handpicked by Arroyo, then the vice president, to be the executive director of the ruling Lakas-NUCD, a well-oiled political party.

Presidential legal counsel Raul Gonzalez says that Devanadera is a “fiercely loyal” member of the party, ready to extend her support without question. Up until now, even if she has set her sights on the High Tribunal, Devanadera apparently remains active in Lakas.

She reportedly attended a dialogue between Lakas stalwarts and former President Fidel Ramos in which the latter was asked to be the chair emeritus of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD (Lakas-Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino-Christian Muslim Democrats) merger.

Devanadera also said that she will resign from her post if she changes political colors in light of the recent controversy surrounding foreign affairs secretary Alberto Romulo Jr. Romulo who said that he will support opposition candidate Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino in next year’s polls.

Our neighbors, too

Should Devanadera make it to the SC, her political ties will still cast a shadow on her. The political affiliation of magistrates has raised questions not only in the Philippines but in other countries as well.

In 2007, tension swathed the judiciary of Malaysia after Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi appointed Zak Azmi, a legal advisor of the country’s major political party, as chief justice.

Malaysia’s Conference of Rulers, which has the authority to ratify the prime minister’s appointments to the judiciary questioned how Zaki, who served as the chief legal counsel of the United Malays National Organization, could be independent in his decisions.

Similarly, a cloud of doubt hung over Indonesian Chief Justice Bagir Manan after his appointment in 2001 because of his ties with Suharto’s Golkar Party.

Unlike her counterparts from Indonesia and Malaysia, however, Devanadera’s political affiliation did not serve as a lightning rod for the Judicial and Bar Council. The JBC is the body which vets nominees for the judiciary.   

Her political background was raised only once, almost in passing, during the public interview. Court of Appeals Justice Aurora Lagman, a JBC member, pointed out that she is a “politician and a member of  Lakas-NUCD-Kampi," the administration party.

But Devanadera was quick to respond that in one of the major cases she handled as a solicitor general, she took a position against one of the groups she was affiliated with as a public official. She argued against the League of Cities of the Philippines (LCP) in a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of cityhood laws in 2008.

The LCP is a “partner” of the League of Municipalities, which Devanadera headed from 1995-1998.

UP lawyer Theodore Te said that political background is not explicitly taken into consideration in scrutinizing aspirants to the judiciary. “There are no clear guidelines if a nominee should even resign from his political party if he gets appointed to the Supreme Court,” he explained to Newsbreak.

On the other hand, Rep. Matias Defensor, a JBC member, said that jurists could stay as members of their respective political parties as long as “they do not engage in political activities.”

Arroyo has previously appointed two politicians to the SC – Western Samar Rep. Antonio Nachura and Taguig Rep. Dante Tinga. It is unclear if they resigned from their parties when they joined the SC.

Some openly thumb down the appointment of politicians to the judiciary, such as Muntinlupa Rep. Ruffy Biazon and former Cavite Rep. Gilbert Remulla.

Remulla agreed that politicians are inextricably connected to a web of issues and personal loyalties that if appointed as magistrates, it would be an impossible task for them to completely say no to those in power.

In a news report, Biazon asserted that “once a politician, always a politician.”  Biazon believes that any judgment passed upon by politicians- turned-magistrates has suspect credibility.

For Vincent Lazatin, executive director of Transparency and Accountability Network, “politicians should not even apply to the SC,” or if they do, they should go through the whole gamut of judicial work – start from lower courts first.

This will help them have a change in their mindset, Lazatin said.

Devanadera did not take this route, but so did other politicians who joined the Court like Nachura, Tinga, former Chief Justice Hilario Davide, former SC Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan, among others.

History

As a solicitor general, Devanadera tried to thwart criticisms that being a Lakas member could impinge on her independence. She told The Lobbyist, an online advocacy magazine in an interview that she does not comment on issues regarding her party, especially if they do not fall under her mandate.

But her history with the party and politics emerges when she acts or responds to issues concerning Pres. Arroyo.

Devanadera cited her past in defending one of Arroyo’s controversial acts. When the Palace distributed P500,000 worth of cash gifts to local officials in 2007, Devanadera saw nothing wrong with it. She said that during the time of Ramos, she also received gas allowance and calamity funds directly from the president.

When she was still an LMP president, one of the most significant tasks that Devanadera had undertaken was to secure signatures for People’s Initiative for Reform, Modernization and Action (PIRMA), a move to amend the charter. The LMP also passed resolutions calling for Ramos to seek another term.

PIRMA would later submit 5.6 million signatures to the Commission on Elections as proof of the public clamor for Ramos’s prolonged stay in office.  The SC thumbed down the people’s initiative campaign, however, as Republic Act 6735 or the Initiative and Referendum Act, the enabling law for people's initiative, was struck down as insufficient. RA 6735 explicitly stated the mechanism for amending ordinary laws, but not the Constitution.

Devanadera recalled that they were hit with a flurry of criticisms then, as PIRMA was largely viewed as a means of perpetuating FVR in power. More than 10 years after the SC ruled against it, however, Devanadera told us that “history showed that we needed it (charter change).”

What was at the heart of their campaign to amend the charter, she explained, was the continuation of the economic reforms that FVR set in place while he was president. During that time, the Philippines was touted as an upcoming tiger economy in Asia.

“Look at what happened. Estrada took over the presidency, and all the economic reforms were discontinued or replaced with new programs,” she said in dismay.

More than a decade after she pushed for PIRMA, the call for cha-cha has been resurrected, this time to supposedly extend Arroyo’s term at the Palace. 

One of the debatable issues in changing the charter, which is expected to be ruled upon by the High Court, is determining how Congress should vote on the charter amendments – whether the lower house and the Senate should vote separately or jointly. If Congress would vote jointly, the administration-controlled lower house is expected to outvote the Senate.

This question was posted to Devanadera during her public interview with the JBC. She answered that Congress should vote as one body, or jointly.

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