Human Rights Committee - Philippine Center for Investigative ...

a lack or excess of jurisdiction shows, resorting to the filing of a petition before the
Supreme Court would be ineffectual since any ground would actually suffice to sustain
the decision of the Ombudsman to absolve the President and her top police and Cabinet
officials from any culpability. The Supreme Court, based on jurisprudence, would never
supplant the Ombudsman’s decision with its (Supreme Court’s) own judgment as to
whether to charge the President, et. al., with graft for causing undue injury to child
prisoners, as this is essentially the Ombudsman’s and the not judiciary’s function.
The well-settled rule confines the original and exclusive jurisdiction of the
Supreme Court in the review of decisions of the NLRC under Rule 65 of the
Revised Rules of Court only to the issue of jurisdiction or grave abuse of
discretion amounting to lack of jurisdiction. 5 Grave abuse of discretion is
committed when the judgment is rendered in a capricious, whimsical,
arbitrary or despotic manner. 22 (citation omitted)
In another case, the Supreme Court en banc held:
Thus, “judicial review of decisions or final resolutions of the House Electoral
Tribunal is (thus) possible only in the exercise of this Court's so-called
extraordinary jurisdiction, upon a determination that the tribunal's decision or
resolution was rendered without or in excess of its jurisdiction, or with grave
abuse of discretion or, paraphrasing Morrera, upon a clear showing of such
arbitrary and improvident use by the Tribunal of its power as constitutes a
denial of due process of law, or upon a demonstration of a very clear
unmitigated error, manifestly constituting such a grave abuse of discretion
that there has to be a remedy for such abuse.
In the absence of any clear showing of abuse of discretion on the part of
respondent tribunal in promulgating the assailed resolutions, a writ of
certiorari will not issue. 23
Ordinarily, a petition for certiorari, prohibition, and mandamus may be availing
from the decision of the Office of the Ombudsman on the ground of grave abuse of
discretion amounting to a lack or excess of jurisdiction should one exist. This is the only
ground to appeal the order of the Ombudsman dismissing the complainants’ class action
to the Supreme Court.
The Office of the Ombudsman, however, has the sole and exclusive prerogative
to determine whom to charge. Its decision may be appealed to the Supreme Court only
on the ground of grave abuse of discretion amounting to a lack or excess of jurisdiction.
Based on jurisprudence, authorities commit grave abuse of discretion amounting
to a lack or excess of jurisdiction if they acted without some basis, which is much less
than the preponderance of evidence threshold test.
Appealing to the Supreme Court would prove ineffective in view of the traditional
deference accorded by the Supreme Court to the prerogative of the Office of the
Ombudsman in determining whom to charge as established by jurisprudence.
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