A militant lawmaker on Wednesday thumbed down Ombudsman Samuel Martires’s pronouncement to dismiss cases that have been pending at the investigation phase for over a year.
ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio made the statement as Martires said his leadership would want to shorten the period of preliminary investigations.
“We are dismayed when he said he would focus on dismissing cases in his stint as Ombudsman,” Tinio said of Martires.
Martires, who was sworn into office earlier this week, said “We will give investigators a period of 90 days….I promise you all motions for reconsideration must be resolved within a period of 60 days. Anything beyond 60 days, the investigation officers must explain why it took him more than 60 days to resolve the motion.”
Tinio said Martires’ policy seemed to cause a “huge problem.”
“Martires said based on the latest SC decision regarding inordinate delay, all cases that remain in the investigation stage for more than one year would be dismissed,” Tinio said.
Tinio said that instead of determining the causes of the delay and acting upon them, Martires would simply order the dismissal of all cases that have taken too long to investigate.
Cases filed against the Ombudsman deal with accusations of wrongdoing by government officials and employees.
During the Ombudsman’s budget hearing at the House committee on appropriations earlier this week, Martires said the Ombudsman will implement a policy to dismiss all cases that are more than one year old that are undergoing fact-finding, “without prejudice to the refiling of these cases.”
Tinio said Martires should have raised the problem with logistics during the appropriations hearing so that it could be addressed by lawmakers.
“One of the reasons why the Ombudsman’s investigation takes too long or is delayed is their lack of field personnel, lawyers, etcetera. There are so many unfilled positions in the Office of the Ombudsman and yet they neither mentioned this nor highlighted it in their budget presentation,” Tinio said.
The Sandiganbayan previously ruled that two years at the Ombudsman level can already be considered “inordinate delay” of cases.
Martires told lawmakers that an estimated 135 cases have been dismissed by the Sandiganbayan due to “inordinate delay.”