The legal opinion of the Department of Justice (DOJ) is no longer necessary in resolving the long-pending request for parity in ranks and salaries between Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) personnel and their counterparts in the National Prosecution Service (NPS), PAO Chief Persida Rueda-Acosta said.

Rueda-Acosta stressed that PAO is an independent and autonomous office under Republic Act No. 9406 and is attached to the DOJ only for policy and program coordination purposes.

The PAO chief issued the statement in response to a recent letter from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), which sought anew the DOJ's legal opinion regarding PAO's request for salary and rank parity with NPS personnel.

“We believe that no resolution from the DOJ is forthcoming, considering that the matter has been pending for more than two years (at the time, now more than three years),” Acosta said.

She added that she had already explained PAO's position in writing to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

In a letter addressed to DBM Undersecretary Wilford Will Wong, Rueda-Acosta, Deputy Chief Ana Lisa Soriano and PAO-Metro Manila Director Revelyn Ramos-Dacpano said they also expect no immediate resolution from the DBM despite PAO's assertion of independence from the DOJ.

The officials said the prolonged inaction has prevented the agency from pursuing the proper legal remedies, effectively leaving the issue in limbo.

“At any rate, such inaction on the part of the DOJ should not serve as a deterrent to the granting of PAO’s request for parity in rank and salaries pursuant to a constitutional provision on the right to speedy disposition of cases,” the officials said.

PAO cited the case involving the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) Corp., which sought the concurrence of the Commission on Audit (COA) and the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel in engaging legal advisers.

According to PAO, the Supreme Court ruled that COA's inordinate delay in acting on PSALM's request amounted to grave abuse of discretion because it violated the constitutional right to a speedy disposition of cases.

“Applying the case by analogy, even without the DOJ's conformity to PAO’s request, the same may be granted,” Soriano said.

She noted that the DBM's delay of more than three years should not prevent the approval of the parity request, particularly since it had already been upheld by the Supreme Court en banc, the Quezon City Regional Trial Court and the Court of Appeals.

Ramos-Dacpano, meanwhile, pointed out that the DBM had already granted retirement benefits to PAO retirees similar to those received by their counterparts in the NPS.

“Nothing more is left to be done by the DBM but to release the appropriate salaries of the concerned PAO officers,” said Alma Latosa, head of PAO's Financial Planning and Management Service and one of the signatories to the letter.

The PAO officials argued that it would be inconsistent for the DBM to recognize public attorneys as qualified for retirement benefits under Republic Act No. 10071, or the NPS Law, while denying them the ranks and salaries provided under the same law.

They warned that failure to recognize parity between the two offices could demoralize public attorneys and encourage them to transfer to agencies offering better compensation and benefits.

“Ultimately, it is the poor, underprivileged, and marginalized that will bear the burden of having less compensated, less motivated, and therefore, less efficient lawyers — a reality inconsistent with the principle of social justice and a violation of the constitutional guarantee of adequate legal assistance to the poor,” Rueda-Acosta said.