I can say, that in my own, not so humble opinion, I don't believe that it is very easy to get justice in the Philippines, if you "don't have money." (Either you don't have the necessary funds to "grease the system" or you are unwilling to spend your hard-earned cash on seeking justice.)
On the other hand, (equally, this is only my own, not so humble opinion,) I believe that it is very easy in this country to get a miscarriage of justice - provided that you do "have money."
I refer only to my own recent case...
My second Ex wife filed totally false, malicious and damaging criminal charges against me.
In short, she was claiming that I had totally abandoned her and our two children without any financial support whatsoever - thus making me guilty of a criminal offense, under Philippine law: R.A. 9282 "The Violence Against Women and Their Children Act"
Not charges to be taken lightly and, if found guilty, punishable by imprisonment.
Well, I got myself a competent Attorney.
I laboriously listed all payments made for the past 5 years.
I went through all my junk and eventually found official bank receipts for most of the payments that I had made on a regular basis over the previous 5 years.
I even found a small notebook - full of my ex-wife's signatures for cash that I had given her and for the expenses that I had incurred on behalf of our children - and for some of the material goods that I had given them
I got fed-up of having to keep traipsing off to Calamba for preliminary hearing after preliminary hearing with the Calamba City Prosecutor - so I eventually gave my Lawyer 'power of attorney' to appear on my behalf.
After months of this, I was absolutely flabbergasted to discover that the Prosecutor, having COMPLETLY IGNORED ALL THE MATERIAL EVIDENSE that I had presented and LISTENING TO THE EVIDENSE ONF NO-ONE EXCEPT MY EX-WIFE decided that there was "probable cause" for the case to go to court!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That was the point when I realised that I was NOT up against a slow and ponderous legal system... I was up against a bunch of clowns in a "kangaroo court" system.
At that point, my Attorney advised me to spend a substantial sum of money on a "Petition for Review"
I wasn't happy but the thought of spending time in a jail in the Philippines for something that I was not even guilty of, left me cold with fear. What was I to do???
The whole thing, including legitimate legal fees and "expenses" eventually cost me PHP 113,000 pesos before I finally got the case against me dismissed - with the Presiding Judge stating:
I wonder if the Prosecutor's little "oversight" would have been detected, had I not had sufficient funds to fight my case??? The average wage for a semi-skilled professional, (like an office worker or a primary school teacher, ) is somewhere around PHP 8,000 or PHP 10,000 pesos a month, in this country. Based on that kind of salary, PHP 113,000 pesos is about 10 or 12 month's salary !!
So, had I been a lowly office-worker, instead of a seaman, earning a good foreign currency salary, I could well have ended up in prison - instead of being able to sit here and write this...