An activist IBP

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

An activist IBP
Sunday, 05 01, 2005

The lawyers’ convention in Baguio City last week seemed to be following the usual scripted rote proceedings, until the last two hours before adjournment when resolutions were presented for adoption. At this juncture, up stood and spoke a lawyer who single-handedly proposed and defended each and every resolution, defining exactly what the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) should do with dispatch if it has to retain any credibility for its continued existence. The lawyer acquitted himself well in projecting what many lawyers had hoped the IBP should have been in the past two years.

Incoming IBP President Leonard S. de Vera, former UP student leader and best debater in many inter-university debates, ably steered the deliberations in the resolutions phase of the convention, and sent out a clear message on what he would do once he takes over on July 1: a complete departure from what many consider as the timorous orientation of the IBP. After all, the fundamental objectives of the IBP are: to elevate the standards of the legal profession; to improve the administration of justice; and to enable the Bar to discharge its public responsibility more effectively, all of which call for a certain degree of activism to achieve them.

The just causes the IBP should have espoused but largely ignored, form part of de Vera’s beef against those at the helm of the organization: protection for lawyers; reduction of court fees; anti-corruption efforts; crafting of a national ID system; eradication of jueteng; investigation of election irregularities; etcetera. Save for the environment program ably managed by Antonio Oposa, the bar discipline efforts of Rogelio Vinluan, and the legal aid advocacy of Bienvenido Somera, nothing much seemed to have been achieved in other areas.

Under his watch de Vera envisions the IBP as active – and effective - in the discharge of its public responsibility, weaned away from the accommodation mode that has hampered the lawyers’ group from serving as advocate for reforms. The silence of the IBP on many key issues, and the seeming lack of any purposeful activity to attain its fundamental objectives, have placed the IBP in league with organizations existing merely to extol their own. De Vera promises to redirect the IBP to the path of activism trailblazed by its founders led by the eminent Justice JBL Reyes.

De Vera represents Eastern Mindanao in the IBP Board of Governors, where he sits as its executive vice-president, a position he gained against all odds. In Garcia, et al. vs. De Vera, et al., 418 SCRA 27 (2003), the Supreme Court dismissed “the Petition to disqualify respondent Leonard De Vera to run for the position of IBP Governor for Eastern Mindanao.” That the Court decided in favor of de Vera, and that he was eventually voted in by his peers, should have put the matter to rest. But time and again others of a different persuasion seem to derive satisfaction in resurrecting the worn-out issues against de Vera at every opportunity. And de Vera has hurdled them all with that singular doggedness that drives him when he confronts adversity.

De Vera is his own man; he has always been the maverick, by taking up causes many among his brethren in the legal profession may not easily warm up to. And that is the saving grace of de Vera’s: he cannot be closely identified with any group. He rose to prominence on his own, the youngest ever to argue – and win - a case before the Supreme Court. Whatever he does, he does with the intensity of the truths he holds in his advocacy. No personal benefit to him at all. For instance, his uncompromising stance in the prosecution for plunder of AFP Comptroller Carlos Garcia has been conducted at great sacrifice of his own practice of his profession.

De Vera is a member of The Fraternity, alright; but his activist and non-conformist streak puts him more often in a class of his own – separate from but still a part of The Fraternity, and an advocate of causes some of its members may not be comfortable espousing. In any case, that is what The Fraternity – monolithic in its raison d’etre to seek the truth always - encourages its members to do: Be the maverick, if you will. At the end of the day, you would still be seeking the right path, and that is all that matters. Thus, de Vera, his “nonchalance” notwithstanding, would still do The Fraternity proud.

The activist streak in de Vera should, by contagion, spread all over the IBP in the next two years. According to lawyer Jose Aguila Grapilon, himself a former IBP president and who is working closely with de Vera, the IBP under de Vera will pursue, besides its mandated obligations, developmental legal services programs that address issues pertaining to distributive justice, social change, policy advocacy, resources allocation, and enforcement of rights.

To be sure, every question about de Vera’s executive ability and moral authority will rise as a ghastly wraith to hound his noble intention of leading the IBP well. Already, there looms the threat of resignation of one member who does not exactly like him, and there is also the specter of another petition to the Supreme Court. But he remains unfazed. By transforming the IBP under his watch into an organization that is once again vibrant, de Vera will have laid the ghosts of doubt to rest – and with finality.

The IBP today is operating under self-limiting (and self-imposed) circumstances. Under de Vera, the IBP at times might seemingly wander off the beaten track, but it will be relevant and dynamic again, confronting reality head-on and fulfilling the honorable and sacred duty this eminent lawyers’ group swore to uphold.


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