Trust funds are sacrosanct.

The trustee or even just the interim custodian of such funds are duty-bound to safe-keep and manage the funds.   

Pension funds, in particular, are the most sacred because these are the fruits of a lifetime’s shedding of blood, sweat, and tears by dutiful workers both in government and the private sector.

If you are an employer, you are required by law to provide counterpart funds for your employees’ contributions to social security institutions.

Your other duty as a collecting agent is the safe and speedy transmission of the withheld mandatory contributions of people to the  pension agency and the matching funds from the employer.  

And yet some local government units have been remiss in their duties and obligations to their employees regarding social security contributions.

Employees are, therefore, unable to avail themselves of certain privileges like access to salary, emergency, housing, and other loans, emergency assistance, pension, and other benefits due them or their beneficiaries.

For instance, Caloocan Mayor Enrico Echiverri has submitted a reconciled statement to the Government Service Insurance System pertaining to the city government’s alleged non-payment of the GSIS contributions.

This is a good thing, but the problem is that why only now? Mayor Echiverri has been in power for eight years, and for all of that time, he did not do anything about the problem?

In a case filed allegedly for graft and corruption, the Ombudsman found that the evidence was strong to preventively suspend the mayor. The issuance of the  suspension order is well within the powers of the Ombudsman and was deemed needed to preserve  evidence.

In Echiverri’s case, the fact that he submitted a reconciled statement would show that the records have not been preserved and that he has full possession of them. In the reconciled statement, he went to great lengths in showing that under his administration, Caloocan “even overpaid” the GSIS.

Ever since Merceditas Gutierrez was forced to resign, the people had renewed hope that the Office of the Ombudsman would not be a rubber stamp like it was under the Arroyo administration.

Now that the Ombudsman is flexing its muscles and preventively suspended Echiverri, another independent branch of government is seemingly getting in the way of the good governance or Tuwid na Daan policy of President Aquino.

The Court of Appeals issued a temporary restraining order against the implementation of the mayor’s suspension, ruling that preventively suspending Echiverri would deprive Caloocan of its elected official. The CA, therefore, proclaimed that the elected official has a right to remain in office.

But the idea of preventive suspension is to ensure that the official so suspended  could not influence testimonies of witnesses or withhold information in the course of investigation by the  Ombuidsman.   

Higher courts are generally expected to be more discerning than lower ones because their main role is judicial review. But even they are subject to review by higher authorities because they sometimes commit errors in judgment.   

In civilized societies as in courtrooms, order is better than anarchy.