​VILLAVERT IS UNFIT TO HOLD ANY POSITION IN THE JUDICIARY, LET ALONE BE PROMOTED

[KARAPATAN Public Information]

PRESS RELEASE
14 May 2026

For reference: Lean Porquia, HUSTISYA National Board Member, +639275577376

VILLAVERT IS UNFIT TO HOLD ANY POSITION IN THE JUDICIARY, LET ALONE BE PROMOTED

HUSTISYA (Victims United for Justice) vehemently objects to the possibility of promoting Judge Cecilyn Burgos-Villavert to higher positions in the judiciary. For the fourth year in a row, Villavert has applied to be an Associate Justice of the Court of Appeals. This year, she is also gunning for a position as justice at the Court of Tax Appeals. She has failed to make the mark at every turn, but persists in applying for promotion. Her current application must be rejected like the previous ones.

Villavert has earned notoriety as the “search warrant factory” for having issued numerous questionable search warrants that led to the arbitrary arrest and filing of trumped-up charges against 76 activists between 2018 and 2020, including the case of activists Ram Carlo Bautista, Alma Moran and Reina Mae Nasino, who were arrested in November 2019.

In August 2023, the Supreme Court shot down the Villavert-issued warrant against the three activists, saying that “As correctly observed by the Court of Appeals, the glaring disparity in the addresses to be searched would have been clarified or resolved had there been a thorough examination of the applicant and his witnesses. And because it was never clarified, it now creates a doubt as to whether the applicant and his witnesses have personal knowledge of the surrounding circumstances justifying the issuance of search warrant.”

The Supreme Court stressed that examinations of witnesses for the purpose of issuing search warrants must be “probing and exhaustive and not merely routinary, general, peripheral or perfunctory.” Pointing out that judges must make their own inquiry on the intent and factual and legal justifications for a search warrant, the Supreme Court emphasized that their questions should not merely repeat the assertions stated in the affidavits, deposition of the applicant and witnesses.

These failings were present not only in the cases of Bautista, Moran and Nasino but in every other search warrant issued by Villavert that justified the arrest of 73 other activists. Warrants issued by Villavert have been quashed on the bases of various deficiencies and her failure to ask the probing and exhaustive questions necessary to determine probable cause. Due to such deficiencies, many of the cases that have resulted from the warrants issued by Villavert have been dismissed on their merits and the detained activists released.

However, three ailing and elderly activists, all of them in their seventies and arrested on the basis of defective warrants issued by Villavert remain in jail. Arrested in November 2018, NDFP consultant Vicente Ladlad and his co-accused Alberto and Virginia Villamor face a number of health challenges, with Ladlad having had to undergo treatment for tuberculosis contracted while in detention. Virginia Villamor had to be confined in hospital after she temporarily lost consciousness due to a stroke.

HUSTISYA contends that Villavert is not a person of proven competence, integrity, probity and independence and is unfit to be promoted.

In fact, she is unfit to hold any position in the judiciary.

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