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More Than One Maam Arlene? Then

Judiciary Needs CleanupJarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star) | Updated October 14, 2013 - 12:00am

The investigation of Judiciary fixer Maam Arlene should lead to reforms in that

branch of government. For, there apparently are at least four Maam Arlenes other

than the one I exposed last Monday. And all of them, sources aver, fix major courtcases by bribery.

One such Maam Arlene, an employee of a Manila court, uses her contacts with the

judges there to swing big pecuniary cases. Another Maam Arlene, with the staff of a

Court of Appeals justice, also loads rulings in favor of richly paying litigants.

Two of the Maam Arlenes have slightly different spellings. One is Maam Aileen,

who meddles even in marital disputes in Metro Manila. The other, Maam Erline,supposedly is more insidious because of her former role in Malacaang. While there,

she had access to rosters of nominees to the Judiciary, periodically submitted to the

President by the Judicial and Bar Council. She and her husband would meet with each

nominee to the Metro Manila or Appellate Courts, to size them up; that is, find out

how far theyd go to be appointed. When an appointment paper comes out, she and

husband would photocopy the document and, again meeting with the appointee, make

it known that he owes them a debt of gratitude. Such debt was and still is collected in

the form of rulings favoring the couples clients.

If there are five court fixers named or sounding like Maam Arlene, then there could

be, judging by the number of letters in the alphabet, many others. There should be noroom in the Judiciary for such corruptors of justice.

When I wrote about Maam Arlene last Monday, I had no inkling it would expose

others like her. The Maam Arlene I mentioned specializes in fixing big corporate

cases in the Court of Appeals and regional trial courts in Manila and other major

cities. She throws birthday bashes for magistrates, gifts their spouses with signature

brands, and bankrolls their family junkets to Hong Kong and Macau. All this, in

exchange for decisions favoring her litigant-clients. One such client allegedly is a

flour smuggler.

I referred to Maam Arlene as the Judiciarys Napoles because of similarities with

alleged Legislature fixer Janet Lim Napoles. The latter recently was exposed as

facilitator of senators and congressmens pork barrels to bogus NGOs. The legislators

pocketed half of the multimillion-peso pork they assigned to her the kickbacks

totaling P6.2 billion in 2007-2009 alone. Napoles paid for parties for the lawmakers,and gifted them with name-engraved expensive pens. Photos of Napoles and family

members with lawmakers have been circulating on the Internet.

Opinion ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1

Maam Arlenes photos too are now going around the social media. Like Napoles, she

is not a lawyer, but apparently can do business with bigwigs from the Bench.

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