The Commission on Audit, or CoA, continues its castigation of the Supreme Court.

While CoA was soft and sweet to known allies of Noynoy Aquino, it was harsh to the Supreme Court and its employees, prompting one reader to ask: Has CoA ever observed the Rule of Law in the performance of its constitutional duties?

The rule of law comprises some principles concerning general, clarity, publicity, stability, and perspectivity of the norms that govern society. The procedural principles concern processes by which standards are administered and the institutions — like courts and an independent judiciary — that their administration requires.

The rule of law is one of the ideals of our political morality and refers to the ascendancy of law as such and of the institutions of the legal system.

The CoA noted that the NCA releases were dependent on the Supreme Court's monthly cash program, which contained a detailed "predetermined" expenditures schedule of payments for goods and services as they fell due.

In its reply, the Supreme Court did not dispute the CoA findings even as it admitted that it had done this the previous year when it used 2012 funds to pay unpaid claims in 2011.

The CoA urged the Supreme Court to monitor the timely implementation of programs and projects to ensure utilization of its funds to fully attain its objectives for the year and revisit the existing guidelines to ensure timely payment and avoid juggling funds or paying 2012 expenses with 2013 funds.

Under Section 53 of the 2012 General Appropriations Act, the Chief Justice was authorized to "augment any item from savings" realized from congressional appropriations received by the high court, which meant he could use this lump sum fund for any item allocated in the national budget.

According to the sages of our time, comparison is the worst word in all languages. CoA applied it to the high court.

In 2012, the year Chief Justice Renato Corona was impeached and Maria Lourdes Sereno was appointed in his place; the high court used only P2.524 billion of the P3.074 billion set aside for "maintenance and other operating expenses" to generate P549.254 million in savings.

In the same year, the Supreme Court used up only P35.27 million of the P401.473 million allocated for capital outlay, which yielded P366.203 million in savings. Added up, these two accounts raised over P900 million in savings for the court.

The CoA report also noted that the Supreme Court had earmarked P838.694 million of the Judiciary Development Fund or JDF as "cost of living allowances" for justices, judges, and court personnel and another P209.694 million for "acquisition/maintenance of court facilities" using roughly the used JDF from previous years.

The CoA frowned on this practice as it had previously recommended that the Supreme Court draw up guidelines on the use of the JDF and adhere to these guidelines.

"The management did not implement the corresponding recommendations. The absence of guidelines prevented the utilization of the 20-percent allocation of the JDF for the acquisition/maintenance of facilities of the courts," the report noted.

The CoA said the procedure currently observed by the Supreme Court ran counter to Presidential Decree No. 1449, which created the JDF.

Aside from its spending habits, the CoA also questioned the high court's opaque or hard-to-understand and difficult-to-explain system in recording its receipt of NCAs as these inflows were recorded separately in the book of the Supreme Court and lower courts, which made it difficult to verify the completeness of the records and to reconcile with the bank records.
(To be continued)