September 9, 2010 · 16:13

Shocking crime stats from Manila

An article in today’s Asia Times mentions a few worrying statistics and trends in the country’s justice system. Here are the highlights, at least related to courts:

In many murder cases across the country, the Supreme Court has ordered trials moved to Manila due to the perceived lack of independence of local courts and judges. 

While Europe convicts about 90% of its murder suspects, and the US approximately 60%, the Philippines conviction rate is less than 10%, according to the European Union’s Philippine Justice Support Program.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Supreme Court also had ulterior motives behind moving murder cases to Manila, such as exercising greater control over these cases and improving its popularity by solving them. Nonetheless, it does dramatically highlight the enforcement gap still so prevalent in the country.

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September 8, 2010 · 19:35

More libel outrages

Tommy Suharto, son of former President Suharto, is suing Garuda Airlines for publishing an in-flight magazine calling him a “convicted murderer.” This is of course ironic because in 2002 Tommy Suharto was indeed convicted of murder by a 5-judge panel for murdering Judge Syafiuddin Kartasasmita and sentenced to prison for 15 years (in a plush cell, then a reduced sentence). If anything, it sounds more like Tommy Suharto is complaining about slander or impugning his image then libel, but I doubt those technicalities will stop the courts. You can read more at Asia Sentinel.

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September 8, 2010 · 16:37

Updates, updates

No, Rule by Hukum is not dead. I’ve merely been busy preparing to begin my Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Michigan. Here are two interesting articles from Burma and Philippines:

First, Irrawaddy has an op-ed piece discussing Suu Kyi’s recent lawsuits against the SPDC under the election laws. It’s an intelligent piece that raises several concerns about the litigious approach to political protest in the current context. In particular, it mentions the possibility that the NLD’s lawsuit might get bogged down in court procedure and legalisms, rather than fomenting political change.

Second, I thought readers might be interested in an update from the Philippines, where the biggest justice-related news is the impeachment proceedings against the Ombudsman for allegedly stalling inquiries into Arroyo’s corruption and human rights abuses. The Ombudsman’s case isn’t helped much by the fact that she was a classmate of Mikey Arroyo. However, one of the leaders of the impeachment proceedings has a conflict of interest, notably a case pending before the Ombudsman. It’s one of those exciting soap operas so common amongst the Philippine elite. You can read more here and here.

I probably won’t be making as many posts now that my Ph.D. program has started, but I’ll try to write once a week and share some of the most important legal news from the region. Of course, when I begin my research, I’ll share that as well.

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Filed under Burma, Philippines

August 19, 2010 · 20:05

Do war crimes pay?

According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration will support a U.N. commission of inquiry into the Burmese junta’s war crimes. The administration hopes that the probe would be a way to discredit Than Shwe and encourage younger officers to oust him (for more on Than Shwe, check out Benedict Rogers’ upcoming biography).
Will it work? Well, let’s recall our old “friend,” Omar-al Bashir. A while ago, I wrote about how the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for President Bashir might expose the impotence of the international criminal system. I recall people who knew Sudan well making the same arguments about Sudan’s ruling party that Burma activists are now making about the tatmadaw – namely, that the elites care too much about their survival to let the head honcho drag them down. However, (as the comic from Pazambuka News below shows), Bashir remains at large and, if anything, Sudan seems to have fallen from the international radar screen.



Oddly enough, so far I haven’t seen anybody mention Bashir in the context of the proposed Burma commission of inquiry. In fact, it’s not clear what form the commission of inquiry would take (it seems separate and distinct from the ICC, which in itself is an odd choice). However, the parallels are striking and suggest that a commission of inquiry without other forms of political pressure will do little to resolve Burma’s political impasse. If anything, it might worry younger officers, who probably also have dirtied their hands while rising through the ranks…

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Filed under Burma, International Criminal Court, Myanmar

August 16, 2010 · 12:58

New Philippine Supreme Court Justice – the leftover one

Unlike the appointment of a Supreme Court chief justice back in the spring, President Aquino appointed Lourdes Aranal-Sereno as the new associate justice without much political hassle or controversy. Her credentials are pretty strong – Sereno received A.B. Economics at the Ateneo de Manila University and received her law degree from UP. Before joining the court, she was Executive Director of the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center and also a faculty member at PHILJA, as well as other institutions. For more details, here is a brief backgrounder on her.  

However, Sereno wasn’t the Judicial and Bar Council’s first choice. The JBC must nominate three candidates for any Supreme Court vacancy, and the president must chose one of those three. However, in this case, Aquino asked the JBC for other names lower down on its list. Sereno was ranked 6th. There’s some speculation that Aquino chose her because she was a friend and classmate at Ateneo, but he denies ever having met her before the appointment. 
I doubt this will amount to much politically for Aquino, but it’s still a slight oddity in otherwise a relatively successful de-thawing of executive-judicial relations.

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Filed under Philippines, Supreme Court