RE:  INQUIRY ON THE APPOINTMENT OF JUDGE ENRIQUE A. CUBE

Judge Enrique A. Cube was on May 31, 1993 appointed Presiding
Judge of the Metropolitan Trial Court, Branch 22, Manila. Subsequently, information was received by
the Judicial and Bar Council that he had previously been dismissed as Assistant
Fiscal of Pasay City. The matter was
referred to the Office of the Court Administrator, which immediately conducted
an inquiry.

In a Memorandum dated July 7, 1993, Head Executive Assistant
Ronaldo C. Olalia of the Department of Justice informed the Judicial and Bar
Council that, per their records, an administrative case for gross misconduct
and dereliction of duty was filed against Fiscal Enrique A. Cube by Secretary
of Justice Vicente Abad Santos for failure to prosecute a criminal case which
led to its dismissal with prejudice. Cube was found guilty as charged. On September 27, 1972, the President of the Philippines signed
Administrative Order No. 341 “Removing Mr. Enrique A. Cube from office as
Assistant City Fiscal of Pasay City.”

Cube applied for appointment to the Judiciary sometime in
1992. In the Personal Data Sheet he was
required to accomplish, one of the questions asked (Question No. 25) was: “Have you ever been retired, dismissed,
forced to resign from any employment for reason other than lack of funds or
dropped from the rolls?” His answer was: “Optional under RA 1145 effective 1996.”

RA 1145 is entitled “An Act Creating the Philippine Coconut
Administration ….” and does not deal with retirement, optional or
otherwise. Cube’s Service Record made
no mention of his having been employed in this agency.

Required to comment, Judge Cube gave the following explanation:

Without discussing the merits of the Resolution of Secretary
Vicente Abad Santos in recommending my removal, the same being moot and
academic, it is noteworthy to mention that the action of the President done six
(6) days after the declaration of Martial Law on September 27, 1972, was
removal WITHOUT PREJUDICE, which legally and technically mean that I am still
qualified to hold any position in the government for the service of my country
which was realized when I have returned to the government service appointed as
Chief of Office of the Community Relations Office and later, as Director of
Civil Security and then as Secretary to the Mayor in Local City Government,
which offices I have handled with sincerity and dedication, until my optional
retirement, when I then decided to humbly join the judiciary.

The Curriculum Vitae which I submitted to the Judicial and Bar
Council had been done with honesty and clear conscience specially so on
questions number 24, “Do you have any pending administrative or criminal
case?” Precisely, I answered “No” because, at the time I filed
my application with the Judicial and Bar Council, there was no ongoing
Administrative or Criminal Case filed against me in any Administrative Body or
Court of the Philippines. Administrative Order No. 341 issued by the President Marcos has long
been terminated (21 years ago) hence, it cannot be construed as pending.

On question No. 25, “Have you ever been retired/dismissed or
forced to resign for reason other than lack of funds?” My answer was
“Optional Under RA 1145 effective 1996,” because actually, I have
filed my optional retirement as a government employee holding the position of
Secretary to the Mayor which was approved by the City Local Government as well
as the GSIS. To this incident, I was
referring to all my government services when I returned to service of the
government again. Hence, I do believe
that with these answers, I have not committed any dishonesty (gross or
otherwise) both on status of having omitted any Information or having committed
any act of misleading the forum concerned relative to my application to be a
member of the Bench.

Likewise, it is my humble opinion that there would be an
inconsistency and absence of logic in my answer considering the chronological
arrangement profounded in the question as follows: “Have you ever been retired, dismissed or forced to resign x
x x?” Thus, I answered in good faith and without malice aforethought, that
I optionally retired from my public service under RA 1145 which was approved by
the government.

Moreover, I honesly believe that I did not commit any gross
dishonesty in filling-up my application form because, first, my removal from
office was WITHOUT PREJUDICE which legally mean that I can still be recalled by
the government to render public service, second, I was in fact RECALLED AND
APPOINTED to sensitive positions in the government prior to this appointment and
lastly, I was allowed by the same government to avail the Optional Retirement
under RA 1145.

The undersigned in his sixty-two (62) years of existence, has never
committed any act of dishonesty in any of his application to any of his
position when he returned to serve the government, more so, when he filed his
application to serve the Judiciary, maintaining his philosophy that the stature
of a judicial member or member of the Bench is one who ought to be with clear
and clean conscience. If the Supreme Court
would take my answers to such questions as deliberated by the Judicial and Bar
Council to be one of Gross Dishonesty, then I would say that when I gave those
answers in my application for appointment to the Bench, I answered them in good
faith and my conscience is clean and the answers given thereto, are honestly
true.

I repeat, that the action of President then (that was 21 years ago)
up to my optional retirement which was in 1989, was that my removal was WITHOUT
PREJUDICE, and I returned to the service of the government, continously,
dedicatedly and conscientiously served the same, honestly, up to the time I
filed my Optional Retirement.

When I filed my application with the Judicial and Bar Council, I
have never had any pending administrative criminal case. And that I honestly believe that since I
have optionally retired myself from the government service with clean name, the
other two last words of Question No. 25, ” x x x, dismissed or forced to
resign,” is NOT applicable to me as I was granted optional retirement in
1989. It is a fundamental policy of the
government that dismissed or forced to resign employees are NOT QUALIFIED or
ENTITLED to RETIRE.

With this COMMENT, I leave my fate to the Honorable and Justiciable
Justices of Supreme Court.

August 25,1993, Manila.

The Comment is a clever evasion but it is not clever enough. It does not satisfactorily explain why Judge
Cube did not disclose the relevant fact that he had been dismissed for
gross misconduct in the discharge of his duties as Assistant Fiscal of Pasay
City. That fact was deliberately
suppressed. Judge Cube would now equate
his dismissal with retirement and give both modes of separation an innocent
character. It is a wonder that he even
hoped to convince this Court of such a feeble if not absurd argument.

No amount of circumlocution can wash away the fact that Judge
Cube was dismissed from the public service and that he purposely did not
disclose this dismissal when he accomplished the bio-data form required by the
Judicial and Bar Council. By such
non-disclosure, the Council was led to believe, on the strength of his
(mis)representations, that he had a clean record and was not disqualified from
appointment to the Judiciary.

The circumstance that his dismissal was without prejudice is not
material, and neither is his subsequent appointment to a municipal
position. What is is his non-disclosure
(or concealment) of the fact that on September 27, 1972, he was removed
as Assistant City Fiscal of Pasay City by the President of the Philippines. Judge Cube did not retire, as he declared in
his Personal Data sheet. His separation
in 1972 was not that blameless. He was
removed after investigation and found guilty of gross misconduct and
dereliction of duty in the prosecution of a smuggling case. He cannot now brush his removal aside as if
it had never existed at all. It is a
blot on his record that has spread even more because of his concealment of it.

In Court Administrator vs. Estacion, 181 SCRA 33, the respondent
judge was found to have withheld from the Court the information that he was, at
the time of his application for
appointment to the Regional Trial Court of Dumaguete City, facing criminal
charges of homicide and attempted homicide. For suppression of this vital fact, he was dismissed by this Court,
which observed:

As stressed in the report, it behooves every prospective appointee
to the judiciary to apprise the appointing authority of every matter bearing on
his fitness for judicial office, including such circumstances as may reflect on
his integrity and probity. These are
qualifications specifically required of appointees to the judiciary by Article
VIII, Sec. 7(3) of the Constitution. The fact alone of his concealment of the two criminal cases against him
is clear proof of his lack of the said qualifications and renders him unworthy
to sit as a judge.

By his concealment of his
previous dismissal from the public service, which the Judicial and Bar Council
would have taken into consideration in acting on his application, Judge Cube
committed an act of dishonesty that rendered him unfit to be appointed to, and
to remain now in, the Judiciary he has tarnished with his falsehood.

WHEREFORE, Judge Enrique A. Cube of the Metropolitan
Trial Court of Manila is DISMISSED with prejudice to his reappointment to any
position in the government, including government-owned or controlled
corporations, and with forfeiture of all retirement benefits. This decision is immediately executory.

SO ORDERED.

Narvasa, C.J., Cruz, Feliciano, Bidin, Regalado, Davide, Jr.,
Romero, Nocon, Bellosillo, Melo, Quiason, Puno, and
Vitug, JJ., concur.

Padilla and
Griño-Aquino, JJ., on leave.