FRANCISCO AWA-AO, COMPLAINANT, VS. JUDGE RAMON SISON, JR., MERCEDES, EASTERN SAMAR, RESPONDENT.

Administrative complaint against Judge Ramon P. Sison, Jr. of Mercedes,
Eastern Samar, involving his actuations as Acting
Municipal Judge of Guiuan, Eastern Samar in Barrio
Election Case No. 127 entitled Francisco Awa-ao et al. vs. Diego Yodico et al.,
for annulment of the election of barrio officials.

The thrust of the complaint is that respondent judge illegally
and with ignorance of the law dismissed the complaint in the above-mentioned
case and that the motion for reconsideration of said order of dismissal
remained unacted upon beyond the ninety (90) day period prescribed by the
Judiciary Act of 1948 as amended.  After
the usual preliminaries, the matter was referred for investigation to the
Executive Judge of the Court of First Instance of Eastern Samar, Judge Andres
P. Arche, who, after proper proceedings, submitted his report and
recommendation finding in effect that the charge of illegal dismissal of Case
No. 127 by respondent judge was justified by no less than the admission of the
complainants themselves, except, to a certain extent, Francisco Awa-ao, that they
had no personal knowledge of the material facts complained of, hence, the
charges were sham, and, as regards the delay in resolving the motion for
reconsideration, the excuse of respondent that because subsequently he came to
know that somehow his younger brother, Atty. Cornelio Sison, then Mayor of
Guiuan was involved he had inhibited himself from further acting in this case
was uncalled for, considering, according to said Investigator, that inasmuch as
it was respondent’s actuation that was being asked to be reconsidered, “he
is (sic) the best person to resolve the same.” On the foregoing basis,
Judge Arche recommended that respondent be “warned to be more careful in
the performance of his duties in conformity with the norms of conduct under the
aegis of the New Society.”

On the other hand,
Justice Manuel P. Barcelona, then the Judicial Consultant of this Court,
submitted a report reading in part as follows:

“Anent the first issue, while respondent erred or acted with
some arbitrariness in dismissing the petition for annulment of the election
result in Bo. Bagua, Guiuan, Eastern Samar, the error is
an error of judgment and not tinged with bad faith or malice.  In the first place, the petitioners
themselves with the exception of one denied the material allegations in the
petition; and secondly, respondent honestly believed that verification is
required as provided for under Rule 7, Sec. 5 of the New Rules of Court.

“With regards to the second issue, that “he failed to
resolve the motion to set aside the order after the lapse of almost nine (9)
months”, the records disclose that petitioners filed on April 3, 1972, a
motion to set aside the order of dismissal dated February 18, 1972; and that
from then on up to October 16, 1972 when respondent inhibited himself from
trying the case, the said motion was not resolved.  I believe that respondent’s inhibition came
only as an afterthought in order to evade his liability for not resolving the
motion for almost six (6) months after it was submitted for resolution without
further argument by the petitioners.  His
reason for inhibiting was that there was mention of the actuations of his
brother during the barrio election, which was the cause for filing an action
for annulment.  If that were so, why did
respondent rule and subsequently
dismiss the petition for the
annulment of the result of the election at Bo. Bagua, when on paragraph 5 of
said petition, his brother, the Mayor of Guiuan, was prominently mentioned as
having conspired with the Board of Election tellers?  Clearly therefore, respondent has delayed the
disposition of the motion to dismiss the order of February 18, 1972.

“In view of the
foregoing, I find respondent administratively liable for neglect of duty, for
which I respectfully recommend that he be suspended for one (1) month
without pay to deter him from committing the same or similar negligence in the
future.” (Pp. 169-170, Record.)

After a careful review of the record together with the evidence
submitted at the investigation, and considering the arguments adduced at the
hearing of this case on January 30, 1976, as well as the memoranda of the
parties submitted on February 19 and March 18, 1976, the Court is of the
considered opinion that the controversy herein spawned largely from the
unfortunate designation of respondent as acting judge in the municipality of
which his younger brother aforementioned was, as he might still be, the
Mayor.  The unpleasant incidents and
suspicions of improper motivations could have all been avoided, if such
designation had not been done. 
Unfortunately, this Court was not informed of this particular detail
when We issued the resolution approving the said
designation.

In any event, the Court is not fully satisfied that respondent
acted entirely without any fault not only in the delay in disposing of the
motion for reconsideration of complainant but also in dismissing outrightly
their complaint.  It may well be quite
correct that he initially refused to act thereon because it was unverified, but
his insistence that the residence certificates used by complainants, perhaps in
their hurry, when they submitted their verification, were not of the current
year is a circumstance that appears to Us as something
that has more than meets the eye.  The
pertinent law requires by its nature the earliest disposal of the case which
involved the election of barrio officials, and since it is not definite after
all that the complaint in such a case should be, according to law, under oath,
respondent, if he were acting according to the highest standards of his office
should have proceeded with more circumspection and less technical
requirements.  Besides, it is not easy to
believe that the political interests of his brother, the mayor, was completely
unknown to him, considering how political affairs spread throughout small towns
even without any other public medium than mouth to mouth communications.  And taking into account that suffrage is of
utmost importance in the political life of our country, particularly in the
grassroot level of the barrios, respondent should all the more have been
extremely careful and upright in dealing with the matter before him, referring
as it did to the annulment of the whole election of the officials in the barrio
concerned.

IN VIEW OF ALL THE FOREGOING, the Court finds respondent
Municipal Judge Ramon P. Sison, of Mercedes, Eastern Samar, guilty of conduct
unbecoming of a member of the judiciary in his actuations as acting municipal
judge of Guiuan, Samar, as basically charged in the complaint, and he is hereby
administered a severe reprimand and fined the equivalent of his salary for one
month at the rate prevailing on December 18, 1972 when this case began.  Any other misconduct on his part will be
dealt with more severely.  Let this
decision be entered in his personal record.

Antonio, Aquino, Concepcion, Jr., Santos, and Abad Santos, JJ.,
concur.