LUNINGNING LANDRITO, PETITIONER, VS. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION, RESPONDENT.

This is a petition for certiorari under Rule 65 of the Revised
Rules of Court and Section 7, Art. IX (A) of the 1987 Constitution, to review,
reverse and set aside Resolutions Nos. 91-1091 and 92-202 of the Civil Service
Commission dated September 24, 1991 and January 30, 1992, respectively.

Resolution No. 91-1091 found petitioner guilty of Grave
Misconduct and meted the penalty of dismissal, (Rollo, pp. 27-30) while
Resolution No. 92-202 denied petitioner’s motion for reconsideration of the
first resolution (Rollo, pp. 31-34).

The administrative case against petitioner was the off-shoot of a
letter of Antonia N. Mirabona, an employee of the Department of Labor and
Employment, which was published in the August 13, 1990 issue of the Philippine
Daily Inquirer. The letter, which
complained of cheating in the August 5, 1990 Career Service Examination held at
the J. Rizal Elementary School in Manila, reads in part:

“The Civil Service Examination was held last Aug. 5, and I was
one of those who took the examination.

“The exam was going on smoothly until I witnessed an
irregularity. In the middle of the
exam, a woman came to the room (Room 17, Josephine Bldg. of J. Rizal Elementary
School, Tayuman and Pingkian Sts., Tondo, Manila). She was in a black-striped dress. Maybe she is a member of the faculty since the proctors who are
teachers of the school, know her. She
then got hold of a questionnaire and started dictating the answers. Our proctor told us to keep it a secret
‘since we want you to pass.'”

As a consequence of the publication of the letter, the Civil
Service Commission – National Capital Region (CSC-NCR) conducted a fact-finding
investigation of the reported anomaly. In the investigation, petitioner was identified as the woman referred to
in the letter. The CSC-NCR formally
charged petitioner with Grave Misconduct for having dictated the answers to two
or three questions to an examinee on August 5, 1990.

After a hearing, the CSC-NCR submitted a Report of Investigation
to the Civil Service Commission finding petitioner guilty of a less grave
offense of Simple Misconduct and recommending the imposition of the penalty of
suspension for one month and one day to six months.

Acting on the report of the CSC-NCR, the Civil Service Commission
held in its Resolution No. 91-1091 that the acts of petitioner constituted the
offense of Grave Misconduct and imposed the penalty of dismissal (Rollo, pp.
27-30).

The report of the CSC-NCR, which was adopted by the Civil Service
Commission, showed that petitioner was a public school teacher at the J. Rizal
Elementary School in Tayuman, Tondo, Manila. On August 5, 1990, she was a proctor assigned to Room 20 of said school
in the Career Service Examination. While the examination was in progress, petitioner entered Room 17 and
asked for a glass of softdrink from Digna Ventura, one of the proctors assigned
to said room. When Ventura went to get
a drinking glass, petitioner got hold of a questionnaire and dictated the
answers to two or three items therein.

After the letter of Mirabona was published in the Philippine
Daily Inquirer, Dr. Ester O. Sto. Niño, Principal of the J. Rizal Elementary
School, called petitioner to her office. Petitioner admitted to Dr. Sto. Niño that she was the person referred to
in the letter.

Petitioner denied having dictated any of the answers to the questions. According to her, she noticed that an
examinee, with a perplexed look on her face, kept turning her head from left to
right as if she was trying to get the proctors’ attention. Inasmuch as the two proctors assigned to
Room 17 were busy, she approached the examinee and inquired what was
wrong. The examinee asked how an answer
could be corrected or changed. Petitioner then borrowed the examinee’s questionnaire and calling the
examinees’ attention, explained the procedure in changing their answers. She testified:

“I explained the directions dahil may nagtanong – ‘What am I
supposed to do kung halimbawa nagkamali ako and I want to change my answer.’ I
did not discuss any (sic), sabi ko halimbawa 22 at sinasabi mong ang sagot mo
‘b’, di i-blacken mo ang ‘b’ at burahin mo yong ‘a’. Kasi sabi ko, kung computerized ito, iyon ang magrereflect. Iyon lang ho ang sinabi ko’ I cited an
example (TSN; January 28, 1991, p. 3; Rollo, p. 71).

We are inclined to believe petitioner’s version rather than the
finding of the Civil Service Commission that petitioner dictated the answers to
two or three questions.

Lourdes Gonzales, a proctor assigned to Room 17, could not say
whether what petitioner dictated were answers to questions in the examination.

On cross-examination, she was asked: “You said you heard her dictating, what was she
dictating?” Her answer: “I
did not exactly her (sic) what she said but she’s dictating something, may be
answers, I don’t know” (TSN, p. 6, January 28, 1991).

Antonia N. Mirabona, the complainant and Digna Ventura, the other
proctor in Room 17, both testified that petitioner dictated the answers to two
or three questions. After petitioner
explained that what she dictated were not answers to specific questions but
hypothetical illustrations on how an examinee could correct a previous answer,
these two witnesses for the Civil Service Commission were not recalled to rebut
the claim of petitioner.

Petitioner claimed that she could not have given the answers to
the questions because she did not even know the correct answers. Credence can be given to such a claim. As a mere grade school teacher, she is not
accustomed to supply the answers to the questions in a Career Service
Examination. The first level of this
examination requires that the examinee has taken some collegiate courses while
the second level thereof requires the examinee to have at least four years of
collegiate studies. (Sec. 8, Title I,
Subtitle A, Book V, the Administrative Code of 1987). The CSC-NCR investigator reported that he could not confirm
whether the answers dictated by petitioner were correct (p. 3, CSC Res. No.
91-1091; Rollo, p. 29).

We should also consider that there were two sets of questions
(Form A and Form B) used in the examination. In such a case, for an answer to be of any use, it was necessary that
the specific question which it referred to must first be read by
petitioner. There was nothing on record
to show that petitioner first read the questions before giving the answers.

In his comment on the petition, the Solicitor General stated that
“[u]nder the circumstances [he] believes that petitioner is only guilty of
simple misconduct and should be meted the minimum penalty under the law of one
month and one day suspension” (Rollo, pp. 123-124).

The CSC-NCR is of the belief “that what she has done could
not be so serious an act that would warrant grave misconduct and result in her
dismissal after long dedicated years of service in the government”
(CSC-Resolution No. 91-1091, p. 3; Rollo, p. 29).

We agree with the Solicitor General and the CSC-NCR that
petitioner is guilty only of Simple Misconduct.

From the evidence on record, we gather that petitioner did not
coach any particular examinee; rather, she addressed all the examinees in Room
17 when she explained the procedure for changing an answer. If she intended to help a favored examinee,
she should have just whispered the answers to the questions.

There is no evidence that petitioner profited pecuniarily from
the act imputed upon her.

Except for the disturbance created by petitioner’s officiousness,
the integrity of the examination cannot be said to have been compromised.

In Grave Misconduct, as distinguished from Simple Misconduct, the
elements of corruption, clear intent to violate the law or flagrant disregard
of established rule, must be manifest (In Re: Impeachment of Horrilleno, 43 Phil. 212 [1922]). None of these elements exists in
petitioner’s case.

Finally, we take note of petitioner’s 24 years of unblemished
service as a public school teacher.

WHEREFORE, Resolutions Nos. 91-1091 and 92-202 of the
respondent Civil Service Commission are hereby MODIFIED. Petitioner is found guilty only of SIMPLE
MISCONDUCT and accordingly, the Court imposes upon her the penalty of
suspension of one month and one day.

SO ORDERED.

Narvasa, C.J., Cruz, Feliciano, Bidin, Griño-Aquino, Regalado,
Davide, Jr., Romero, Nocon, Bellosillo, and
Melo, JJ., concur.

Padilla, J., on leave.