A JUDGE has been dismissed from service after he resumed duties at the Bangued, Abra Regional Trial Court despite being suspended.
The Supreme Court en banc said Judge Raphiel Alzate committed gross misconduct and insubordination,“affecting his fitness and worthiness of the honor and integrity attached to his office.”
Alzate was initially ordered dismissed from the service in 2020 after the SC found him guilty of railroading marriage annulments.
But in 2023, the tribunal reversed Alzate’s dismissal as it exonerated him of the claim that he had resolved marriage annulment cases in haste. It instead suspended him for five years for resolving annulment cases without the proper report or procedure, and ordered him to pay a P200,000 fine.
In a February 5, 2024 Manifestation and Compliance submitted to the SC, Alzate said he had paid the fine and assumed office as Presiding Judge of Branch 1 of the Bangued, Abra RTC on February 1, 2024.
He asked that this be deemed sufficient compliance with the 2023 SC resolution.
But the SC, in a February 20, 2024 ruling, said Alzate “flagrantly disrespected and defied” its resolution suspending him for five years, which he is only deemed to have partially served with his one-year preventive suspension.
Alzate should have started serving his suspension when he received the SC resolution on January 31, 2024, it said.
But what he did was to pay the fine and report back to the Bangued RTC without clearance, it said.
It also found it “readily suspicious” that Alzate did not mention his five-year suspension in his manifestation and compliance, which it said indicates that he did this to “mislead the Court itself and consequently negate its efficacy.”
“This we cannot allow. Neither can we allow Judge Alzate to resume donning the judicial robe as his grave, nay, tainted actions, and omissions invariably depict his unworthiness,” it said.
The SC said Alzate could not have misunderstood the penalties that it had imposed on him as its resolution on his case was clear.
“To be sure, directives issued by this Court are not to be treated lightly, certainly not on the pretext that one has misapprehended the meaning of said directives,” it added.
