A great symbol

A great symbol | Daily Tribune

I first met the legendary Rene Saguisag in court, and not under the most felicitous of circumstances. We were adversaries; I was a lawyer for the city government of Manila, he was posing a constitutional challenge to the act of then-Mayor Alfredo Lim of spray-painting the words “WARNING: A DRUG PUSHER LIVES HERE” on the houses of those arrested for narco-trafficking.

It was my job to defend what the Mayor was doing. And thus clashed two lawyers: one, a grizzled veteran; the other, almost fresh out of law school. Saguisag passionately argued that the measure was constitutionally infirm for lack of a law and a final conviction; I — with equal heat born of youth — said it was well within the power of government, under the police power, to warn its citizens of potentially dangerous personalities.

After a particularly tempestuous round of oral arguments, he pulled me aside and told me, “Topacio, for someone so young, you’re not at all bad. Misguided, but not bad.”

When the case was overtaken by events after the City Council passed an ordinance authorizing the spray-painting, the judge dismissed Saguisag’s case on the ground that it had been mooted. He again came to me and said, “Topacio, it’s a draw. But in effect, you won, because now your mayor can continue doing what he’s doing. Therefore, you owe me lunch.”

I bought him lunch, paying through the nose at a restaurant well above my pay grade then to afford, but I wanted to impress him. He was, after all, a former senator and a member of the Cory Aquino Cabinet, and I was a lawyer but two years out of the bar exams. He told me, after noticing my shock at the bill, “I would have been more comfortable in a turo-turo.”

That was the enigma that was Rene Saguisag. He was, as is a matter of public record, a man whose politics was left of center. He defended suspected communist rebels, student activists, and brought suits to avoid what he thought were anti-populist laws.

Yet it did not stop him from defending Erap Estrada after the latter was ousted. It also was no obstacle to him his being close to lingerie mogul (and indubitably a burgis komprador) Tony Gonzales of Mondragon, who was his wife’s boss. He also had a great love for ballroom dancing, a decidedly bourgeois pastime. And it was no hindrance to him to be friends with me: young, politically conservative, a Marcos loyalist and lawyer to Mayor Lim whom he considered a fascist. He used to joke that Lim had his own version of “population control.”

After that initial soltada, as it were, we clashed in other high-profile cases involving Lim and his own brand of governance, but surprisingly after I went into private practice, we were on the same side on a number of cases. Most memorable were two: the appeal of the driver of a rental car convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to life when he didn’t know his passengers had tons of shabu with them, and the case of two prostitutes who were raped and their expensive phones stolen by police after the sex workers were taken into custody. Both were pro bono, and both we won.

After some time, he was calling me “Ferdie” and insisted that I call him “Rene,” which I couldn’t bring myself to do, out of respect. So I called him “Idol.”

I was one of the first to visit him when he had that bad accident that killed his wife, and I regularly visited him at home as he was recuperating. The inside stories he told about Malacañang and his contemporaries would make for a great book, but I have been sworn to secrecy.

I will miss Rene Saguisag. He was a great symbol of what a great lawyer should be: impassioned about the causes he espoused, but not so blinded by them that he would shun those with differing views.