APPARENTLY without any trace of embarrassment, Jesus Santos, a member of the Government Service Insurance (GSIS) board of trustees, admitted having called up Camilo Sabio, chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), to ask support for the GSIS campaign to end the Lopez family’s “mismanagement” of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco).

This admission was made at the closing stages of the hearings of the three-member Supreme Court panel that inquired into the improprieties in the Court of Appeals stemming from the complaint of Associate Justice Jose Sabio Jr. that an emissary of Meralco, Francis de Borja, allegedly offered a P10-million bribe so that he would inhibit himself from the case lodged by the GSIS against Meralco.

The fact that Santos is also a lawyer of First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, who has no direct interest in the GSIS-Meralco case, instantly raised the questions: What and who prompted Santos’ intervention—his connection with the GSIS or with Mike Arroyo? Santos’ intervention showed the extensive tentacles of outside interference in the judicial process of the Court of Appeals by executive officials acting on behalf of the GSIS.

This interference centered on the connection between Justice Sabio and his elder brother, PCGG Chairman Camilo Sabio. The pattern of these interlocking interventions was extracted by the members of the Supreme Court nexus in the course of the testimony of the Sabio brothers. The members of the panel appeared appalled by the ethical implications of this interference. The hearings have uncovered a landscape of outside interventions coming not only from the Meralco side (manifested by the P10-million bribery attempt) but more from the executive department’s side.

The last few days of the hearings focused on these interventions more than on disputes among the CA justices over which of its divisions had jurisdiction to hear or decide the case or which justice should have written the decision.

In admitting he called up Camilo Sabio, Santos denied he tried to influence the CA or that he called up at the behest of Arroyo. He said his call to the PCGG chair to lobby for the GSIS was “the right thing to do.” He added: “I only told Chairman Sabio if anything legal can be done to give justice to the long suffering Meralco customers being saddled by exorbitant power rates.”

Santos also told the Inquirer he considered Sabio a “longtime” friend. “I thought it was my legal and moral duty to help the GSIS on my own,” he said, adding that he asked Sabio to help serve the ends of justice.

“You see, in this case of Meralco against GSIS, we are citizens of the country,” Santos continued. “We are consumers being victimized by Meralco. I explained to him that in order to serve justice and defend the interest of fellow consumers we must support the campaign of GSIS president Winston Garcia.”

Santos’ statements amounted to saying that the end justifies the means. He said he decided to assist the GSIS lawyers when he heard that the Villaraza Cruz Marcelo & Angangco law office was representing Meralco in the case in the Court of Appeals. When he made this intervention, Santos put his action in the context of the Meralco-GSIS dispute and by implication politicized it, given that Garcia has acted as the battering ram of the Arroyo administration in its campaign to seize control of Meralco and dismantle the economic power base of the Lopez family. At the same time, Santos justified his intervention by claiming he was defending the interest of “long-suffering fellow consumers” from the “exorbitant” power rates, determined by government regulatory bodies, not by bleeding hearts presenting themselves as defenders of public interest to justify interference in the judicial process.

Testifying before the Supreme Court panel, Camilo Sabio said Santos’ call prompted him to ask his brother, Justice Sabio, to seek his assistance in the case. Camilo said he saw nothing unethical about phoning his brother under the “peculiar circumstances” in which the GSIS “has taken up the cudgels for the people suffering Meralco’s actions.” “In this unique situation, I believe I was right and I stand by it,” he said.

In response to questions from panel members, Camilo said he did not think that his act violated the lawyer’s Code of Professional Responsibility. He claimed his actions did not violate the Revised Penal Code provision prohibiting executive officers from making suggestions to judicial authorities in relation to any case. When retired Justice Carolina Griño Aquino pointed out that the Code of Responsibility states that lawyers should not attempt to give the appearance of influence, Sabio made an exception of the case. He said the provision could not have applied to the case.

This led another panel member, retired Justice Flerida Ruth Romero, to observe that Sabio was making the Meralco-GSIS case an exception to the rules on ethics and the law. “I’m really struck by the fact that this case seems to stand out as an exception… to which you justify everything you were doing or saying… even if it were going beyond the line of legality or ethics,” Romero said, adding that she was “bothered by your concept of what’s wrong and right, legal or illegal, ethical or unethical, proper or improper.”

Sabio said that in Philippine culture, brothers talked. He said there was nothing improper about his brother calling him up and presenting to him arguments that might be useful, saying his brother never tried to influence him. These observations on culture seemed too much for retired Justice Romeo Callejo to take. He said, “For you to rely on Filipino culture and say it’s natural for a brother to call up a brother who is a justice, that bothers me.”

It bothered everybody.

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