If ever the planned charter-change is implemented, one of the judicial reforms that many legal practitioners and law school professors are in favor of being adopted is to bar politicians from being appointed court judge or justice.

The necessity of this prohibition arises from the fact that government officials are political personages who, in the course of holding office, get to be cozy with other politicians, people they deal with and, of course, their own relatives.

A media statement e-mailed to this columnist, begins:

"In theory, a judge or justice is supposed to inhibit himself from a case involving former associates or relatives. But in the real world, that concept of self-inhibition remains an ideal that is rarely observed.
"And when ex-politicians-turned-justices refuse to inhibit themselves in cases involving people known to them, their decisions or rulings are always suspect due to the perception, rightly or wrongly, of their lack of impartiality.

"Take for instance the many electoral protests that have been filed in court and rendered moot and academic because of the issuance of temporary restraining orders by the judges, resulting in their being overtaken by the next election.

"Salus populi suprema est lex, the will of the people is the supreme law, so goes the maxim. But it seems that this slogan is not being strictly followed even in our courts where personal loyalties, blood ties, friendship and other matters seem to have great influence.

"So it often happens that the will of the people is thwarted because of the law's delay, which denies justice not just to individuals, but to entire communities and people.

"A prime example is the election protest filed against an incumbent Rizal province congressman with the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal. With the election a little more than a year away, he succeeded last December in obtaining from the Supreme Court a TRO, thus stopping the ongoing revision of ballots by the HRET."

The TRO stopped the HRET from concluding its count, which had it not been stopped, would have ended in the unseating of the congressman from the House, the statement said.

But the HRET, cognizant of its mandate to determine the true winner in an electoral contest for a House seat, ordered the use of its funds just to continue the recount. It was at this point that the congressman ran to the SC.

There must be a prohibition against judges and justices issuing TROs and injunctions on electoral protests because they leave said cases unresolved, with most rendered moot and academic by the next election.

In general, judges and justices must allow constitutional bodies hearing election protests like the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal to do their job.

Sadly, the issuance of TROs and injunctions on election cases had often resulted to controversies and on the people not knowing who really won in a particular disputed election.

It's common knowledge that many politicians get themselves appointed as judges and justices and, in hearing cases in relation to their former political turfs or allies, are known to have thrown out the window judicial objectivity.

Having pointed out the misdeeds of TROs and injunctions being used by some unscrupulous judges and justices to foil the electoral will of the people, a law should be passed barring the appointment of politicians to the judiciary.

We have already seen the disastrous results of such changing of the hats “from a political to a judicial one. And it must stop.