SC asked to compel Sarmiento to vacate post

The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday was asked to issue an order that would compel retired police director Lina Sarmiento to vacate her post as head of the Human Rights Victims Claims Board (HRVCB).

In a petition, former Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo told the SC that Sarmiento is not qualified to her new post because she used to head the Philippine National Polices human rights affair office and became part of the machinery which attempted to deodorize the stench of the internationally condemned cases of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances.

Ocampo also said that Sarmiento was a member of the former administrations Task Force Usig, a body created supposedly to investigate cases of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

Task Force Usig failed in its mandate to prosecute the perpetrators of these heinous human rights abuses because it passed on the blame to the victims and their supposed organizations rather than investigate internally into the complicity of members and officers of the police, military and paramilitary, he said.

Ocampo said Sarmiento is not qualified because the law requires the HRVCB chair to have deep and thorough understanding and knowledge of human rights violations committed during the regime of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

There is nothing on public record that respondent Sarmiento ever got involved in any effort against such atrocities during the dictatorship. If at all, she was a silent, passive, if not acquiescent cog in the security apparatus of the repressive dictatorship, he said.

It is not only a question of whether respondent Sarmiento is qualified under the law but is also a question as to whether respondent President Aquinos act of appointing respondent Sarmiento contravenes the very essence of the law he is supposed to implement, he added.

Aside from Sarmiento, the other members of the HRVCB appointed by President Aquino are Wilfred Asis, Galuasch Ballaho, Byron Bocar, Jose Luis Martin Gascon, Glenda Litong, Jacqueline Veloria Mejia, Aurora Corazon Parong and Erlinda Senturias.

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SC asked to compel Sarmiento to vacate post