Haydee's Glare

Posted by Sheila Coronel 
PCIJ

ON Sunday night, the members of the Free Legal Assistance Group, which rose to prominence during the Marcos era for its work defending political prisoners and victims of human rights abuses, gave a warm and moving tribute to Haydee Yorac, who died last week after a long bout with cancer.

In a eulogy remembering Yorac's work for FLAG, lawyer Pablito Sanidad recalled how she traveled throughout the country despite the risks to be able to defend the many victims of the Marcos dictatorship. She was, said Sanidad, "a continuing inspiration for a struggle that many of us thought could not be won." She also a wonderful traveling companion whose laughter enabled those around her to momentarily forget how dangerous the times were. "If she was not afraid," Sanidad recalled, "why should we be afraid?"

With Yorac, "there were no hidden agendas, no selfish personal motive, no malice and no ambitions for personal gain or fame." This, said Sanidad, was what set her apart from many others in public life and what made her credible even to those she fought against. All these qualities made her "a powerful force."

The full text of Sanidad's tribute:

Tonight, the members of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) gather to say a final farewell to our beloved colleague — HAYDEE. We have just lost one of those who were the guiding lights of this organization during the darkest days of the struggle to restore democracy in this country. She leaves us, as we are again struggling to keep that democracy alive.

It is hard to accept that Haydee is gone. Most of us took it for granted that she would always there to turn to when we needed her. How indeed can one imagine this country without Haydee? It is belated and how I wish we could have done this when she was alive, but in behalf of FLAG, may I extend our heartfelt thanks Haydee — for all the guidance and leadership, the encouragement and inspiration, the sacrifices and the lessons learned.

If FLAG feels a special kinship for Haydee, it is because we were lucky to know her as few groups perhaps had the privilege to know her. We came to know her up close, as a colleague and as a friend, for many years. And those were difficult years when the bonds between friends and even relatives were tested to the extreme. We got to know her as a human being long before she would become the icon that she came to be regarded years later. And it is also because of this, that we in FLAG feel a special, personal, intimate sense of loss.

The country may have lost one of its ablest publics servants. FLAG has lost one of its dearest friends and leader. As a law professor she responded quickly to the call of the late Sen. Jose Diokno to join a revolt against a feared dictatorship. A difficult revolution because Ka Pepe asked that it be waged, not with arms, but with the law. And most of the time it was the constitution and the law of the dictator. When it could have been tempting to resort to less peaceful means, FLAG tried hard to work within those parameters.

FLAG would not win many court victories with such a handicap. But much of its success came as they grabbed the law of the dictator and used it to demonstrate that they were not instruments of justice, but of oppression. They were not guarantees of freedom, but chains of control. And the oppressiveness of the law would be used to open the eyes of the people to their bondage and with the knowledge promote unity and empowerment.

And Haydee was ever in the forefront. She was the Regional Coordinator of FLAG for Metro Manila for many years until Marcos fell in 1986. She was equally at home arguing cases before the courts, as she was marching with the parliament of the streets, or lecturing to lawyers and advocates, or consoling victims of tyranny and abuse. For the cause of FLAG, during the dark night of martial law, with little regard for personal safety, she would travel to the mountains of Northern Luzon, to Southern Tagalog, to the Visayas, to Mindanao to serve as a reminder and a continuing inspiration for the struggle that many of us thought could not be won.

It was in the course of all those visits that members of FLAG came to know her as a friend and endear her to them as one of their own. While those times had more days of danger and even death, because many FLAG lawyers fell by the wayside in the search for freedom, there were also its light moments. While many people would perhaps have an image of Haydee as a strict, stern, no nonsense individual, that was not the complete picture. She had a soft, a funny and a human side. We came to know that quality because we traveled with her, ate with her, worked with her and even drank with her. She could hold her drink better than most of us.

She enjoyed exchanging news with FLAG lawyers. They would laugh and joke with her. Her familiar throaty laughter during evenings of fellowship in many far-flung part of this country, would serve to make many young FLAG lawyers momentarily forget the perils of those times. If she was not afraid, why should we be afraid?

She would even allow them to tease her about her hairstyle. Something which Presidents, Generals, Senators or Cabinet members would perhaps not dare do for fear of getting nailed with that famous glare of hers. But she saw very little need to use that glare in FLAG. FLAG was a home of sorts for her. And whatever may have been said about her hairstyle, to most members of FLAG she was one of the most beautiful memorable persons we ever had the honor and the privilege to meet and to know. And we are grateful for that.

She was beautiful in her sincerity and courage. She beautiful in her simplicity. She was lovable in her integrity, in her dedication, in her selfless commitment and in her incorruptibility. And she was beautiful above all because she devoted all those God given virtues, not for herself, but for her country. With Haydee there was little pretense. There were no hidden agendas, no selfish personal motive, no malice and no ambitions for personal gain or fame. She would, if she could, do what was needed to be done, if it was for country.

That perhaps is why she had such a tremendous credibility. That is why she was so respected, not only by her friends, but also by those who had the misfortune of finding themselves on the other side in the many battles that she waged. Despite her strong and seemingly stern public image, few harsh words were ever said against her from those to whom she may have directed her wrath and indignation. That was because they knew that the positions she took were never due to any personal rancor, they were for love of country.

And it is difficult to quarrel with that. And the qualities of Haydee were tested not only by the battles she fought against the government of the dictator, but also by the efforts she exerted to lend credibility to the administrations that came after the fall of the dictator.

When Haydee joined government many had serious misgivings. We feared that her will and idealism alone would not stand, and she would soon be swept away by the currents of intrigue and corruption that plague our government. But she proved us wrong.

She, by herself, was such a powerful force that all Presidents after martial law tried to borrow from that credibility and enlist her help. She joined the Commission on Election, and her COMELEC was definitely far more credible than the Comelec that we have today. With her there, it would have been impossible to produce a "Hello Haydee" tape.

Woe would befall anyone who would have dared call Haydee by phone and tell her what to do in an election contest. Among her favorite stories in FLAG meetings was how she tamed even the much feared Ali Dimaporo.

When she agreed to head the PCGG, many thought it was a dead end. The ghosts of the Marcos regime continued to haunt the corridors of the agencies looking for his wealth and were determined to thwart every effort. Again she proved us wrong. What she achieved would be difficult to equal. It earned her the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

I was about to say that Haydee was a true Filipino patriot. But two nights ago I watched television and saw Ping Lacson. He said Aragoncillo and Michael Ray Aquino are patriots. If that is the new definition of patriotism from someone who wants to be President, then Haydee does not belong in that company.

The irony of Philippines politics is that people who are admittedly far less qualified than Haydee find it easier however to get to the Senate. It is unfortunate that we lose Haydee at this stage of our journey. The country is clearly in turmoil. Our people are as anxious and as they are confused. The future is not clear.

We live today without any clear idea of what may come tomorrow. Our highest ambition is the hope that we will survive. We are in search of someone or something to lead us out of this forest of misery. In the countryside there is disenchantment. They look at our leaders, from all sides, with skepticism. They see one side trying very hard to cling to power by using all means, fair and mostly foul. They see the other side trying very hard to take that power without however any hint or promise of any real and meaningful change. They see unrepentant and arrogant remnants of the regime that Haydee fought against. In the end the choices look suspiciously similar and many find no strong reason to unite under one or the other.

It is during times like these that we miss people like Haydee. From her we would have listened. Not only because she was gifted with a special clarity of mind and objectivity of intellect, but more importantly because what she would have said, would have been accompanied by a moral tone, as credible as it is unquestionable, because it is anchored upon an impeccable record of public service reflective of a true and honest concern for the country.

Perhaps it is that element of moral trustworthiness more than anything else that our people seek in the present crisis. It is it perhaps the failure to recognize it in any of the many aspirants to power and leadership that we continue to drift in uncertainty and discord.

Only the Supreme Law Giver can explain why He would pluck Haydee from our midst, just when we needed her again. Is it because her death would make us understand and appreciate better the messages she was trying to convey with her life and her examples? Only the Almighty would really know.

But it would be a pity if we would not allow Haydee and the life she led to guide us in the search for solutions to the problems of our nation. A nation she loved above anything else and even at the sacrifice of health. We should not ask her for anything more. She has done her part. She has done more than enough. She deserves her peace. If is for us to honor her memory by keeping alive the principles she stood for in public service and use them to judge those who may wish to lead this country and claim they have the best interests of the people. There is one effective test for all of them.

Can they pass the glare of a Haydee Yorac?

Cha-Cha Lobby

Sounding Board : The Charter change foreign lobby

Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas, S.J.
Inquirer News Service

THE MORE NORBERTO GONZALES TRIES TO explain his lobbying contract with an American law firm, the more ridiculous he looks. "Ridiculous," however, is not enough to characterize what has been done. "Treasonous" might come closer.

The first task which the contract gives to the American lobbying group is to "(s)ecure grants or congressional earmarks for support of the Charter change initiative of the President of the Philippines, which would reshape the form of government in the Philippines from its current structure into a parliamentary federal system." Gonzales tried to cover this up by suggesting that what was more important in the contract was the task of seeking a "capability enhancement program for the Armed Forces of the Philippines." The paragraph on capability enhancement, however, comes almost as an afterthought; or more correctly, as a camouflage.

What is being sought is the opposite of the patriotic efforts of Filipino leaders' lobbying in the United States Congress, in the early '30s, for a more honorable Independence Law. Malacañang owes it to the Filipino people to disclose the full story behind this act to subvert the independence of local efforts to revise the fundamental law. The Constitution guarantees the "right of the people to information on matters of public concern." Foreign involvement in the revision of our Constitution is a matter of paramount public concern. It cannot be said that the subject is one of those matters to which public access to information may be limited. The subject does not involve "state secrets regarding military, diplomatic and other national security," even if it involves principally the political aspirations of certain public figures.

Significantly, there is this constitutional rule about financial contributions from foreign governments: "Financial contributions from foreign governments and their agencies to political parties, organizations, coalitions, or candidates related to elections constitute interference in national affairs, and, when accepted, shall be an additional ground for the cancellation of their registration with the Commission, in addition to other penalties that may be prescribed by law." The proscription of financial contribution to political parties from foreign governments is designed to insulate the electoral process from foreign interference. Accepting such contribution comes close to being treasonous.

The evil becomes magnified when the intended object of interference is the re-crafting of the fundamental law. If acceptance of contribution for such object is not explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, it is not because the Constitution does not see it as an evil but rather because the evil is so obvious that no thinking person can miss it. In fact, this is so obvious to many current high-ranking officials that they have quickly joined in the chorus singing that they know or knew nothing about it.

As if the sin could be covered by making it private, Gonzales has gone on to say that public money will not be spent but that money will come or has come from private individuals. Does a government acquit itself from a criminal liability simply by enticing goons to do a crime?

I am not saying that the alleged private contributors are goons. They may be perfectly honorable, if misguided, individuals. But we should be told, under the right to information on matters of public concern, who these private individuals are. Are they Filipinos or are they foreigners? What are their own private interests? This is a matter that is crying for a public confession and not just a simple acknowledgment of a lapse in judgment.

If there is anything that we should learn from this caper, it is that this administration cannot be trusted with orchestrating the revision of our Constitution. For reasons of its own, whether honorable or not, it is dead set on forcing a switch to a parliamentary and federal form of government. The constitutional revision enterprise is a solemnly sovereign one. It should be insulated from influences that can imprint on the fundamental law directions that do or can undermine national interest. We know from our experience in the electoral process that money can be dangled to deaden consciences. Foreign money should not be allowed, much less should it be sought, to influence popular choice.

Betrayal of public trust was the leading accusation against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the impeachment proceeding against her. That accusation has not been cleared. It has merely been swept under the rug by a subservient House of Representatives. Now comes this appeal for financial assistance from a foreign government to subvert the solemn sovereign task of revising our Constitution. If she had nothing to do with it, she should disown it promptly. If she is its occult author, she should rue it publicly.

Several years ago, when the renewal of the Philippine-US Bases Agreement was the issue, senators stood tall to oppose the President's desire. The nation cheered. Revising the Constitution can be more significant and more far-reaching in its effect than the fate of the US Military Bases in the Philippines. Forces within the current administration, in their desire to have their way in the amendatory process, are bent on drowning the Senate in an avalanche of House of Representatives votes. This is a moment when once again senators should stand tall.

Impeachment Limbo

Sounding Board : We will never know for sure

Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas, S.J.
Inquirer News Service

WHETHER or not Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo really won the presidency by defeating Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) and Ping Lacson, we will never know. By "we," I mean those of us who had no hand in the much talked-about manipulation of the last presidential election. And, of course, there are also those who do not care to know what does not affect their exclusive lives.

We could have had some degree of certainty had the inquiry made by the Supreme Court, as Presidential Electoral Tribunal, reached completion. But when FPJ died, the inquiry stopped with the Court's refusal to allow his widow to substitute for the candidate-even if only for the sake of finding the truth.

The inquiry could have continued if the third placer in the last presidential election, Lacson, had decided to file his own protest. Under the rules of the PET, a third placer may file a protest. But Lacson, for reasons of his own, chose not to.

If the case filed by Loren Legarda against Noli de Castro reaches conclusion, we may also get an inkling of what actually happened in the presidential race. Some of the election returns challenged by FPJ may also be challenged by Legarda. That, however, will not be enough to clear up the cloud that hangs over Ms Arroyo's presidency.

Meanwhile, evidence that seriously casts doubt on Ms Arroyo's victory has been piling up and coming out in the media. For instance, more than one-half of the latest issue of Newsbreak, a weekly news magazine that is fast establishing a reputation for hard-nosed journalism and integrity, is devoted to stories about the last elections. The lead article is titled "Cheats Inc." and it makes serious allegations in persuasive details. It cites some of Ms Arroyo's operators as saying that "they continued to manipulate the votes even after her proclamation"-evidently in anticipation of an election protest. It also alleges that "when the results from Poe's bailiwicks in Luzon came in, the President's margin from the fixed votes in the Visayas was almost wiped out. Dagdag-bawas was then carried out in Mindanao."

The anticipated election protest materialized, but it was abruptly ended by the death of FPJ. We may have to wait until the Last Judgment to know the truth. In the meantime, the cloud over the legitimacy of GMA's election will continue to haunt her and affect her capacity to govern.

Contrary to the opinion so warmly defended by a congressman from Mindanao, the impeachment complaint against GMA does not have, for an objective the intent of looking into whether Ms Arroyo won or lost. The congressman argued on the floor of Congress that the impeachment complaint should not be allowed because it is an attempt to resurrect the election protest already ended by the death of FPJ. The good congressman must know that an election protest can be filed only by a defeated candidate who claims to have won the election and who is seeking to take the place of the proclaimed winner. That is not the object of the impeachment complaint, whose object is merely to determine whether Ms Arroyo committed an impeachable offense which can justify her removal from office even if she indeed won the elections.

Whether or not this verification will take place in an impeachment trial is now seriously in doubt. The justice committee of the House of Representatives has decided that the three impeachment complaints should be trashed. If one-third of all the members of the House should uphold the decision of the justice committee, the nation would never know whether the allegations in the three complaints are true.

What are some of these allegations?

I start with the Lozano complaint-admittedly the weakest-and his subsequent supplemental complaints. Lozano alleges that: she has been silent about the wiretapped conversations and about the flight of Garcillano; the silence in both instances amounts to a betrayal of public trust; she lied when she confessed to a lapse in judgment when in fact she called several times-meaning, she made several lapses in judgment; she allowed her husband to go into "exile" as part of a cover-up. The Lozano complaint is suspected of being a "friendly complaint" designed to bar more serious complaints.

There was an attempt by the oppositionists to beef up the Lozano complaint by accusing her of impeding the administration of justice in various manners, and of concealing ownership of various pieces of property contrary to law. She is also accused of tax evasion, of acquiescing in the killing of political dissenters, of approving contracts manifestly disadvantageous to the Republic, of accepting bribe from jueteng operators, of undermining the independence of the Commission on Elections, and of knowingly allowing electoral fraud and misuse of government funds for electioneering purposes. Those are a big mouthful of charges.

The authors of the amended complaint sum up their allegations in the following words: "By her conduct, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines, has undermined the integrity of her office, has brought disrepute on the presidency, has committed culpable violations of the Constitution, bribery and graft and corruption, and betrayed the public trust. By so flouting justice and the rule of law, she has committed an unforgivable outrage against the Filipino people to whom she must answer under the Constitution."

Will we ever hear evidence in support of these accusations? It seems that, in the words of veteran politician Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, these complaints are headed for the trash can. Let's just hope that after the verdict is out, no matter how unsatisfactory, the nation and its leaders will buckle down to work and move on to make this place a little better to live in.

Lawyering in RP

Passion For Reason : Bar exam reforms: Finding meaning in ritual

Raul Pangalangan
Inquirer News Service

FOREIGN scholars and diplomats have asked me recently: How come Filipinos love to talk like lawyers? It is bad enough that legalese is itself bad English, but they wonder why ordinary citizens, entitled to the "sovereign prerogative of choice," prefer to be shackled in the technical language of the law even when they ponder fundamental moral or political questions.

There is actually a universal explanation: the "layman's fascination with technicality," and it's not limited to law. You visit your doctor, and what used to be a simple "puwing" [dust particle] in your eye is suddenly a "corneal abrasion"; a fraternity neophyte's "paso" [skin burn], suddenly "hematoma"; you get an A-OK in your annual medical, and you say the test results were "unremarkable."

There is a vintage Three Stooges scene. Their jalopy conks out in the middle of the desert, and Larry turns to Moe and says: "I thought you said you could fix this car?" Moe replies: "Sure, I'm an expert. If the distributor doesn't distribute and the differential is different, this car will not run!"

But there is also a uniquely Filipino explanation: the traditional hegemony of lawyers in our public life. Just list the former presidents: Manuel Quezon, Sergio Osmeña, Jose Laurel, Manuel Roxas, Eldipio Quirino, Carlos Garcia, Ferdinand Marcos. The nation has turned to law as a "secular religion" because, bereft of a national consensus on much else, for us the law embodies the only provable agreement on how and when government can step into our lives, what Holmes called the "incidence of the public force."

The high priests of that creed are the lawyers, and we select the guardians of the faith through the annual ritual known as the bar examinations. On each of the four Sundays in September, we reenact this rite of passage. This Sunday, 5,758 candidates are expected to take the bar examinations at the De La Salle University's Taft campus, and of these only 20 to 30 percent are expected to pass.

The Constitution gives the Supreme Court the sole power to admit lawyers into the profession. Each year, the Court designates one of its justices to chair the bar exam committee, and he then appoints a bar examiner for each of the eight subjects in the exam. The examiners submit their draft questions to him, and tradition has it that he makes the final call on which questions will be asked. This year, Justice Romeo J. Callejo Sr. chairs the committee of examiners.

The exam is the sole device for quality control for aspiring lawyers. The Court effectively tells the law schools what courses to offer, what laws to teach, what skills to develop among their students.

For example, when the Court's Study Group on Bar Examination Reform proposed to drop Taxation as a bar subject, it was feared that law schools would no longer teach the subject. When I served as a bar examiner in Political Law many years back, I was given strict instructions: Do not ask questions requiring rote-memory. Do not ask for enumerations and definitions. Do not ask objective-type questions; ask essay-type, problem-based questions. Do not look only at the conclusion but give credit to analysis and reasoning. In shaping the bar exams, the Court also shapes the way the law schools will teach their students.

Yet the Study Group has found that the bar exams have also retarded legal education. "[P]aradoxically, the very existence of the examination has stymied in a significant manner legal education. Many if not most law schools have made of passing the Bar Examinations the principal, or even sole objective of legal education. This has without doubt impoverished legal education...."

Instead of training students to practice law and serve clients, schools train them in what American law schools deride as "bar law"-"short answer questions" based on a simplistic set of facts vastly out of touch with real-life problems that are rarely so neat and tidy.

I have elsewhere discussed the most radical reforms adopted by the Court in July 2004, based on a program drafted by Justice Vicente Mendoza, and to be implemented in the coming years. For the first time, the reforms focus on the sociology of the exams. Because of the historical fixation on the bar exams, the entire system is geared toward plugging all exam leakages and insulating the examiner from undue pressures. The examiner is solitary and ad hoc, his identity shrouded in secrecy until he grades all 5,000 exam booklets over five months. The Mendoza reforms will allow panels of examiners and checkers who can learn from one another, and will safeguard the integrity of the exams through the integrity of these people and scientific ways of grading.

Still, the Court has no choice but to tighten the exams because of laxity and grade inflation in our schools. It performs the winnowing-out function that many law schools have abdicated in exchange for higher enrollment or, characteristically Filipino, for the goodwill and misplaced thanks of undeserving students. They merely shift to the Court and its bar confidant the role of being the bad guy.

Historically, the 30-percent passing rate in the Philippine bar exams is not too low -- Korea's is 2 percent and Japan's 3-5 percent. But there are fundamental differences. Abroad, there are law-related jobs for those who don't make it, and they are not stigmatized. In the Philippines, even the 30 percent who pass may end up underemployed. Moreover, both Korea and Japan have begun reforming their bar examinations: Japan in particular now aims for a 25-percent passing rate and has created new law schools.

As I told our gladiators at the Taft Avenue collosseo, they who aspire to be "wise in their calling," remember the call: "Strength and honor. At the signal, unleash hell. What we do in life echoes in eternity."