The Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) maintained that a legal opinion from the Department of Justice (DoJ) is not necessary for the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to act on its long-pending request for parity in ranks and salaries between public attorneys and their counterparts in the National Prosecution Service (NPS).

PAO chief Persida Rueda-Acosta said her office is an independent and autonomous agency under Republic Act 9406 and is attached to the DoJ only for policy and program coordination.

“The PAO does not require DoJ conformity on this matter,” Rueda-Acosta said, reacting to a recent letter from the DBM again seeking the DoJ’s legal opinion on the agency’s salary parity request.

“We believe that no resolution from the DoJ is forthcoming, considering that the matter has been pending for more than three years,” she said, adding she had already explained PAO’s position in writing to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

In a letter to DBM Undersecretary Wilford Will Wong, Rueda-Acosta, PAO Deputy Chief Ana Lisa Soriano and PAO-National Capital Region Director Revelyn Ramos-Dacpano said continued inaction by both the DoJ and DBM had effectively placed the issue in limbo and prevented the agency from pursuing appropriate legal remedies.

They argued that the absence of a DoJ opinion should not prevent the approval of PAO’s request, citing the constitutional guarantee on the speedy disposition of cases.

Parallelism

The officials pointed to a Supreme Court ruling involving the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM), where the high court held that the Commission on Audit’s prolonged inaction on a request for concurrence constituted grave abuse of discretion and violated the constitutional right to speedy disposition.

“Applying that ruling by analogy, PAO’s request may be granted even without DoJ conformity,” Soriano said.

She added that the DBM’s more than three-year delay should not serve as a barrier to granting salary parity, especially since similar claims had already been upheld by the Supreme Court en banc, the Quezon City Regional Trial Court and the Court of Appeals.