Ka-Blog!

A not so crazy Kiwi

The first New Zealander I met was a Maori.  He was an activist and he had a lot of terrible things to say about the white guys who took away their land from them.  It was true; the white guys really did rob lands from the Maori and gave them lots of diseases besides.
        It took more than a decade before I had the chance to talk to more New Zealanders, both of whom are white.
        The first white New Zealander I met is the director of this international NGO that places volunteers in nearly 30 countries all over the world.  His name is Colin Salisbury.  He is not a stranger to the Philippines having visited the country in years past as a volunteer himself.  He lived on top of the infamous Smokey Mountain and stayed there for weeks.  I have been to Smokey Mountain myself and I thought my one day visit is more than enough horrid memory of a place.  Colin went back several times for different reasons.  He visited us last August when we just started our volunteer placement organization.  I like him.
       Our very first volunteer from New Zealand, or Kiwi as they curiously like to call themselves, is someone of a different mold entirely.  Unlike the two activist-type guys I met earlier, this one was a capitalist.  He owned his own company and by any measure was a successful white guy.  He slid into a funk the past couple of yearsthat led him to our shores.
       I urge anyone out looking for a good read to log on to www.crazymalc.co.nz.  No one in the information superhighway could have put his experiences in the Philippines better than he did.  His website is so good that it is de rigeur  for me to mention his web addy to all our future volunteers.
       I am one of the tens of thousands who regularly log on to crazymalc's website.  I would like to believe that I have the most special reason to do so.  In the many times when I think of giving up our volunteer placement work because of the oh-so-many problems we face, I think of Malcolm and how volunteers like him make all our sacrifices worthwhile. 
       He says he's crazy.  But in a crazy country like the Philippines, Malcolm is one of the sanest men I know.
       I have always said that Malcolm has been our best volunteer so far.  And although I do sometimes, I really do not like repeating myself.  But, really, Malcolm is the best.
       This is just a cobbled up entry.  I only felt obliged to write it because I read that Malcolm misses a whole bunch of Filipinos.  He's back in his own country--a land where the national bird is a flightless one.
        I only wish to tell him that only one guy misses us in New Zealand but there are many who miss him in the Philippines.
       It is unfair.

My list of lawyers

  My parents chose my college for me—I was a wimp, I’m sorry. They wanted their only son to be a lawyer and so they enrolled me in the country’s last remaining boys’ college which happens to be one of the best law schools in the country.

       Somewhere in between sessions with books and beer in my junior undergrad year, I found myself being interviewed by beer-bellied guys with curious names like Adolfo Ares Gutierrez and Samuel Ceazar Porcalla. Perhaps I was funny enough to them and so Gutierrez took me under his alcohol-soaked (chicken-) wings and taught me many things about campus journalism—and then some.

       When I ran intro trouble with some egos, my journalism professor taught me how to stand by what I wrote. His name is equally curious—Honor Blanco Cabie.

 While I was being persecuted and prosecuted, this guy with a toothy smile helped me a lot. He was the first one to give me a visit when I got arrested for my first libel case—at four o’clock in the morning. The organization he was president of at the time gave me my bail money.  This guy, name of Representative Teodoro A. Casiño, is himself being persecuted, prosecuted and is in detention as I write this. 

        Like Cabie, Casiño, and perhaps Porcalla, I too dreamt of becoming a lawyer but have become a journalist instead.

       These reminisces came about when I saw a copy of the Inquirer announcing that a UP law grad topped the bar exams again. This is really nothing new as half of the country’s bar topnotchers were from UP anyway since the exams started in 1913. A sidebar also informs us that Ateneo had 18 topnotchers while San Beda had 6. A Bedan candidate, retired Supreme Court associate justice Florenz D. Regalado, has the highest ever bar exams score of 96.7 percent. This year, though, there was no Bedan in the top ten—a first in decades.

I wouldn’t know if a law school would have me. I wouldn’t know if I have what it takes to get a law degree. Malay ko ba? Hindi ko pa naman nasusubukan. Personally, siguro naman. Kung ang mga bobo ngatulad ni Raul Gonzales ay pwedeng maging justice secretary, bakit naman ako hindi pupwede?

       I am now an Ateneo student (for a diploma in radio journalism) and have thus attended all three schools. Sometimes kasi, I kinda like thinking about my parents’ dreams for me. Kailangan naman kasi ng kilusan ang mga abogado e.

       Ngayon, I am neither a lawyer nor a law student. But I have benefitted from the kindness and the skill of many lawyers. Mine may not be as sought after by many, but here is my list of the best lawyers I know:

1. Atty. Ricardo Valmonte: my first ever lawyer; defended me for 15 long years for free. He won my first libel case before the Court of Appeals last year;
2. Atty. Gregorio Fabros: ACT’s legal counsel; defended me against my next two libel suits—for free.
3. Atty. Romeo Capulong: simply the most dedicated human rights lawyer na meron ang bayan;
4. Retired Justice Rodolfo Palattao: I want his latest client behind bars but he was a poor boy who did good in his career;
5. Atty. Rachel Pastores: she is Kodao’s current legal counsel—also pro bono.
6. Atty. Marie Yuvienco: she helped us spring a teacher from jail in 1998—pro bono.
7. Atty. Edre U Olalia: I don’t know why he’s in this list. I just included him because his officemates read my blog.

       Valmonte, Fabros and Palattao were my wedding ninongs. I am not that close to Capulong—I just admire him from afar. I don’t know Pastores and Yuvienco that well except as a recipient of their kindness. Shoot me and burn my carcass if I make Olalia a ninong when I decide to change religion. Seriously speaking though, Olalia is a very dedicated human rights lawyer.

  My Bedan classmates who became lawyers may later insist inclusion in this list. But unless they take on human/civil rights cases pro bono or they treat me to free beer, they can’t make my select list.

       Mind them, my blog gets read at least once a day.

PS: Omaygad! How could I forget Atty. Neri Javier Colmenares?  He is a foremost civil liberties champion and the best Bedan lawyer I know.  What's more, he was my batchmate in San Beda, perhaps the oldest in our batch.  He stopped schooling for some years because he was a fulltime activist.  Many pounds later, he went on to become a very good lawyer who has argued cases successfully before the Supreme Court.

PS2:  Atty Olalia has read this blog.  He says he's thankful to be included in my list.  He would never admit to this but I think he liked it.  He just reminded me never to write about HIS sordid secrets in my future entries.  Pag-iisipan ko pa.

PS3:  dumadami ang nag-re-react sa blog na ito.  si rita baua at si Professor Jose Maria Sison ang latest na nag-aksaya ng oras. and I admit it is not even well-written.  is it because i wrote about edre olalia and opened a can of, uh, worms?

I meant to write about edre's singing of Lennon's "Imagine". Preempted ako!

read what they have to say about my lawyer of the moment:

Subject: Re: My list of lawyers

Hoi Taritz,
Singer din si Edre. Pakantahin mo ng Imagine ni John Lennon at makita mong zinger siya.
Joma

vera gensan wrote:   

Dear EO,

I like the article, sounds very much like Raymond when he talks.

Raymond happens to be my kababayan. We have the same color, and the same best friend we both idolize.

Eniwey, I think that you would also be one of the lawyers I admire.

Bakeeeeet?

Kasi, of the many things that Donat told me about you.

At one point, Donat said that was for giving up fighting for his case and thinking of more dramatic things he could do to avoid an unjust punishment.

But with your legal assistance, daw, aba, now he is a free man.  Pero, syempre, his enemies can still do many mischiefs and he is vigilant about this.

When he related to me the things he went through legally and with you there as his lawyer, that was when I realized na, Hanep, binibiro lang namin ang patpatin na yun!!!

Syempre, even when I didn't yet hear stories about you from Donat, of course naman bilib naman na ako sa iyo, kasi may isa kang client na, bukod sa thinker at writer na isa sa number one enemy ng US, ay poet and SINGER pa.  O, di ba?

Yan ang hirap sa iyo, hindi ka singer.  Kagaya ko.

Of course, si RTC is a superb lawyer. 

Hearing him, I deeply admire lawyers who defend other defenders. 

Ang husay niya sa court. He knows so many cases and explains all these, effortlessly.  But I am mindful that he must have done so much reading in his house and his cluttered van.

Like you, his clients are all makukulit to the powers that be.

Watching him in some of the hearings where he defended ang mga makukulit na kagaya nina Ka Bel, SO, at iba pa, talaga, I feel a great embarassment and uneasiness for the lawyers and prosecutors when RTC, chides them, for instance, for not preparing well for said hearings, and also for not reading and understanding his pleadings for his clients.

Or, as when he publicly rebuked Prosecutor Velasco, former KMU guy in Cavite, for thinking of his career by kowtowing to GMA, instead of dispensing justice for the persecuted partylist representatives.

But what makes me idolize RTC is his constant advise to lawyers to always consult with the leaders and organizers of the mass movement. 

That, for me, is the ultimate icing to the cake of what lawyering, in the final analysis, should be.

Taritz