Judge Ceferino Gaddi was an inspirational figure to many Filipinos during his time. He set an unwavering example of a public official who knew how to do his job, did it well – and wasn’t afraid of the consequences.
Rising from the ranks of the Philippine legal system, Ceferino Samson Gaddi started out as a court stenographer in 1935, served as private secretary to two successive justices of the Supreme Court after independence, and then as government solicitor, until he was appointed to the court of first instance in Angeles City in 1968 by then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
Right away the public noticed how justice was administered by the neophyte judge. In his first week on the bench, Judge Gaddi convicted a person accused of jeepney theft, sentencing him to four to eight years of imprisonment after a trial that lasted only four hours. This was a novelty then (and certainly even more so at present), and the judgment was not contested.
The presence of American troops stationed in Clark Air Base – the largest and most powerful US outpost in Southeast Asia then, located in Central Luzon – gave rise to the commitment of crimes in violation of Philippine law.
Clark Air Base became a symbol of US imperialism, and of how the Philippine government and Filipino officials and the elite catered to foreign interests. Furthermore, the US war against Vietnam and the whole of Indochina was then raging and inflaming passions around the world.
In 1970, his most celebrated case involved several American airmen charged with abduction and rape of a Filipina domestic worker. At the start of the hearing, the lawyer representing Clark Air Base told the court that two of the accused had already left the country. Judge Gaddi and the city fiscal strongly castigated the practice of US military officials allowing the departure of their personnel once they faced charges in local courts. He questioned whether the American base authorities were submitting themselves to the jurisdiction of Philippine courts. In reply, the base commander asserted that, in accordance with the US-RP military bases agreement of 1947 as revised, the local court did not indeed possess such jurisdiction.
Judge Ceferino Gaddi then ordered the arrest of the American base commander. The controversy highlighted the unequal treatment accorded to the Philippines and Filipinos under the terms of the agreement. But when he asked the Department of Justice to enforce his arrest order, Justice Secretary Vicente Abad Santos stepped back and passed on the problem to the Department of Foreign Affairs, saying it was a diplomatic concern rather than a legal matter. Later, the Marcos government allowed the base commander to leave the country without any objection, despite the standing arrest order against him.
It was surely a vindication for Judge Gaddi when the US Court of Appeals later remanded back to the Philippines one of the airmen who had been allowed to leave the Philippines. Interestingly, it was learned that the Clark air base commander had written Judge Gaddi asking him to return the entry pass giving him access to the shopping facility (PX) inside the base.
This entry pass was much coveted by Filipinos because they could then buy chocolates, cigarettes and other goodies not available elsewhere at the time. It was a privilege that some Filipinos were grateful to the Americans for. Judge Gaddi, however, told the base commander that he had returned the pass, unused, the day after he got it on Feb. 5, 1968.
In a stern move that drew the admiration of many, Judge Gaddi in another case also ordered the arrest of Justice Secretary Abad Santos for the latter’s failure to appear before the court when required to present certain documents. “My conscience is my only boss,” he declared.
He had demonstrated this earlier in his career when, through his efforts as a government solicitor, thousands of naturalized Filipinos (mostly of Chinese origin) were stripped of their Philippine citizenship because of irregularities in obtaining it. He also fought successfully against the exemption status of Americans under the Retail Trade Act (at least in the city of Manila).
Judge Ceferino Gaddi spent less than four years on the bench as a judge in Angeles City. But he set records unheard of today, deciding 260 cases in one year, with 116 convictions.
In 1972, with the country in turmoil and President Marcos openly determined to stay in power beyond constitutional limits, Judge Gaddi was transferred from Angeles and assigned to the Caloocan court of first instance. He had barely warmed his seat there when martial law was declared. At the peak of a sterling judicial career, he was asked to resign.
Under the dictatorship, the Civil Liberties Union of the Philippines revealed that “all judges, from the highest to the lowest, work under the threat of dismissal at any time. Mr. Marcos can replace any judge any time…and in fact has repeatedly done so. Veteran judges of long service have been dismissed…their names, careers and reputations ruined and their future shattered.”
Judge Ceferino Gaddi was reinstated as a trial court judge by President Corazon Aquino in 1986, serving until his retirement in 1988.
The sovereignty issue raised by his decision had led to the renegotiation of the military bases agreement during the Marcos martial-law administration, a notable feature being the installation of Filipinos as base commanders. But the Americans remained in full control of Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base.
Judge Ceferino Gaddi is honored today as a hero because he embodied the qualities that the Filipino people rightly expect of their public servants: principled patriotism, devotion to duty, and personal integrity.
