Lowering the bar

Since October, I have been trying to get the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) to make a public stand on the way the House Quad Committee (Quadcomm) has been treating lawyers: badmouthing them in public, denying them access to their clients, undermining the lawyer-client relationship.

In a letter dated 24 October, I wrote the IBP president, saying in pithy language — after painting in sharp relief the abuse that lawyers have been taking both from the Senate and the House — that the response from the lawyers’ organization was one of “deafening silence” in the face of “the brazen and continuous assault on our profession.” I thus urged the leadership “to take immediate and forceful institutional action on the matter.”

The response was, as it has always been lately, quite the same: crickets. When the IBP finally said something, after the shabby treatment Atty. Zuleika Lopez received from the Quadcomm, it was not what most of my brethren in the profession expected. The IBP’s reaction was wimpy, cowardly and effete.

Its stand was not to make a stand. It basically said that since Atty. Lopez was the lawyer of a politician, then due to the non-partisan character of the IBP, it could not comment lest it be accused of taking sides. It said Atty. Lopez knows the statutes and ruling case law, so she knows what remedies to resort to. In the meantime, let her rot in jail.

The inutility of that stance is most galling, given that the primordial purpose of bar integration is to “elevate the standards of the legal profession, improve the administration of justice, and enable the bar to discharge its public responsibility more effectively.”

But how can you do all that when the lawyers themselves are victims of injustice and ill-treatment, with nary a whimper from the IBP? Its chicken-hearted response to violent effrontery to members of the bar such as Harry Roque, who was bullied and browbeaten on points of law by a bunch of jackals whose knowledge of jurisprudence is nil to none, can only embolden the members of the legislature.

This kind of docile attitude from people trained to fight — and fight mightily — for legal rights is not only unacceptable, but extremely laughable.

Besides, it is a barefaced hypocrisy for the IBP to say that it never took political sides. The Bikoy controversy, where the IBP leadership allowed the use of our headquarters on Julia Vargas Avenue — a facility for the exclusive use of members of the bar — for a press conference in 2019 conducted by a shady individual hurling wild accusations against President Duterte, exposed the IBP leadership’s Janus-faced pretentions.

Up until the present that aberration has never been adequately explained to the Supreme Court in spite of an investigation instigated by yours truly. And previously in 2016, the IBP put out a statement on supposed threats by Duterte against certain lawyers. So much for being non-partisan.

The IBP used to be a prestigious group, headed by such legal luminaries as former Supreme Court Justices J.B.L. Reyes and Marcelo Fernan, Edgardo Angara and Raul Roco (who subsequently became senators) and a veritable who’s who in the profession.

The decline came in 1989, when Frank Drilon used government resources for the campaign of his wife, Violeta, for IBP president, which so scandalized the Supreme Court that it invalidated the polls. A mini-repeat of the same happened recently when a lawyer was sanctioned for improper activities during the campaign for a certain IBP chapter.

Now the IBP has degenerated into an Old Boy’s Club more focused on holding parties than protecting the interest of its members. Were it not for its mandatory membership, it would be lucky if two dozen people would remain in its ranks. Its sole value — at least to those who seek to monopolize its top leadership — is that its head gets to choose members of the Judiciary.

If leadership in the IBP has come to just that, what a low bar it has indeed set for itself.