Samuel Martires Should Go Back to Law School

By Hail to the Chair — December 2, 2025

JUST recently, retired Ombudsman Samuel Martires, who is turning 77 years old next month, has been pre-occupied defending his issuance in 2020 of Memorandum Circular No. 1 during his term as the nation’s top graft investigator – a responsibility he abandoned during his entire seven-year useless hold on the said public office.

His Memorandum Circular No. 1 is about the Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) of public officers on file in the Office of the Ombudsman. Under that circular, anybody interested in obtaining a copy of the SALN on file in the said office will not be allowed the get one unless he submits a written, notarized authorization issued by the public officer whose SALN he wants to obtain. Which public officer in his right mind will issue such authorization? Come on.

Martires’ circular did away with the right of the people to access a document imbued with public interest, a right guaranteed by the Constitution and by law. In one stroke of his pen, the aging Martires abrogated upon himself the absolute power to mess around with everybody’s constitutional rights.

***“When the Constitution knocks, Sammy locks the door—and swallows the key.”***

In a clumsy and brainless attempt to justify his Memorandum Circular No. 1, Martires repeatedly alleges in the media that the Supreme Court upheld the validity of his circular in a decision rendered in 2021. That case is Biraogo v. Martires (G.R. No. 254516,February 2, 2021).

Martires is woefully mistaken. As a former Justice of the Supreme Court, he should be ashamed of his arguments. He should go back to law school.

I filed that case in 2020 after Martires, as Ombudsman, ignored my written request to obtain a copy of the SALN of then Vice President Leni Robredo. The Supreme Court eventually dismissed my petition, but the decision is not what Martires alleges it to be.

A careful examination of the decision reveals that the Supreme Court dismissed my petition supposedly because I failed to show an “actual case or controversy” to be resolved by the Court, inasmuch as my request was met by a mere verbal refusal by Martires, and not by a formal, written denial. In other words, the dismissal of my petition left Memorandum Circular No. 1 in force, but the Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of the circular itself. It also clearly means that the Supreme Court said that it has no valid ground for a ruling on the constitutionality of Memorandum Circular No. 1.

The problem with the decision is that after dismissing the petition on the ground that there is no valid ground for a ruling on the constitutionality of circular, the Supreme Court went on to say that the right to access the SALN of a public officer is not an absolute right. It is that “side comment” or off-tangent remark in the said decision which Martires now invokes to justify his issuance of Memorandum Circular No. 1. however, conveniently or even deliberately overlooked the fact that the said “side comment” is obiter dictum — a statement that carries no doctrinal effect and which cannot be cited as a judicial precedent. Precisely because the Supreme Court said that there is no valid ground for ruling on the constitutionality of Memorandum Circular No. 1, there is no constitutional or legal basis for the Supreme Court to add the remark that public access to a public officer’s SALN is not an absolute right.

As any freshman law student knows, an obiter dictum cannot be cited as a legal precedent. Being a former Justice of the Supreme Court himself, Martires should have known that. Maybe he is simply incompetent in the field of Constitutional Law, or he deliberatedly misread the weight of the pronouncement in Biraogo v. Martires.

If he is incompetent, his attempt to publicly defend his issuance of Memorandum Circular No. 1 by citing Biraogo v. Martires justifies the view that, as mentioned earlier, he should go back to law school. If it is a deliberate misreading of the weight of the ruling, then he should be disbarred for unethical conduct as a lawyer. The fact that Martires was once a Justice of the Supreme Court does not excuse him from comprehending the real weight of the ruling in Biraogo v. Martires.

As an aside, the refusal of Martires to reply in writing to my letter-request became his shield to avoid judicial scrutiny. It seems to me that the Supreme Court ignored the glaring fact that the inaction of Martires on my letter-request constitutes an outright denial of the same. That should have been enough to warrant giving due course to my petition. Observers suspect that the Supreme Court ruled that way in Biraogo v. Martires to discourage public access to the SALNs of the Justices of the Supreme Court themselves.

The Office of the Ombudsman should file criminal and administrative charges against Martires for his issuance of Memorandum Circular No. 1. If it does not, I will ask Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo to initiate the appropriate complaint against this poor imitation of the people’s sentinel. ■