[OPINION] When authorized luminaries defend the corrupt 

The occupation stands at a fork. Proceed defending those that bled the general public purse dry, or redirect brilliance towards accountability. The primary path is worthwhile. The second is what the Lawyer’s Oath calls for.

What if the nation’s most distinguished legal professionals stopped shielding these behind the flood management scandal and joined the prosecution as an alternative? That single resolution would change the chances. The grafters would lose their elite defenders. The state would achieve sharper weapons. Convictions would not be delayed into irrelevance.

However the reverse is going on. 

Pacifico “Curlee” and Cezarah Rowena “Sarah” Discaya, accused of steering billions in anomalous contracts, seem in hearings with Cornelio Samaniego III as counsel. 

Brice Ericson Hernandez, the Division of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) engineer-turned-whistleblower, is represented by Raymond Fortun, a fixture in high-profile defenses. 

Henry C. Alcantara, former DPWH Bulacan district engineer, is being recommended by Flaminiano Arroyo & Dueñas, with Allan Dueñas publicly confirmed as his lawyer. 

These should not routine practitioners. They’re battle-tested names, expert in litigation.

The backdrop is staggering. 

Almost 9,855 flood-control initiatives since 2022, value over P545 billion, at the moment are beneath investigation. Senate hearings have heard engineers testify that 20 to 25% of challenge prices had been skimmed as kickbacks. 

The Discayas have thus far recognized 17 legislators as alleged recipients. The Fee on Audit has launched fraud audits. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has signed Govt Order 94 creating the Impartial Fee for Infrastructure (ICI). Property have been frozen. Instances are being constructed. The paper path and testimonies are damning.

But whilst establishments transfer, the accused arrive in courtrooms flanked by prestigious regulation corporations. Each accused is entitled to protection, however no oath requires the Republic’s strongest corporations to launder reputations for purchasers tied to plunder. 

To just accept briefs figuring out the charges come from stolen pesos just isn’t neutrality. It’s complicity. Every movement filed is billed twice to the general public: first by way of the billions misplaced, then by way of the price of stalling justice.

Now image the reverse. 

A individuals’s tribunal

If Samaniego, Fortun, and Dueñas had refused these retainers, if top-ranked corporations overtly declared they might not signify grafters, the stability would tilt. The accused would nonetheless discover counsel, however they might not benefit from the armor of status. 

If the nation’s finest legal professionals lent their ability to prosecutors as an alternative — sealing proof chains, constructing monetary forensics, anticipating delay ways and authorized sophistry — convictions would not really feel unreachable. The message to the general public can be unmistakable: excellence just isn’t on the market to corruption.

Why not a individuals’s tribunal?

That is additionally why the concept of a individuals’s tribunal, a really impartial physique devoid of the encumbrances of the ICI, is now being pushed in authorized circles. Such a tribunal, free from dynastic affect and elite seize, composed of residents, impartial legal professionals, and credible consultants,

might weigh proof with out concern or favor. It might not substitute the courts, however it could expose how the formal justice system bends beneath the load of cash and connections.

A individuals’s tribunal would ship swift, public, and clear accountability. It might act as an ethical counterweight, exhibiting that justice needn’t be purchased. And it could remind the authorized occupation that status with out conscience corrodes belief. For the accused, a individuals’s tribunal would strip away the consolation of delay and status; for the general public, it could affirm that their voices and their losses matter.

Floodwaters rise as a result of drainage initiatives had been incomplete or by no means constructed. Public belief collapses as a result of instances are stalled whereas legal professionals revenue. Each failures stem from the identical illness. Till the brightest within the bar determine to defend the Republic as an alternative of plunderers, the flood won’t recede.

The Bar is at a crossroads. The occupation stands at a fork. Proceed defending those that bled the general public purse dry, or redirect brilliance towards accountability. The primary path is worthwhile. The second is what the Lawyer’s Oath calls for. The nation is watching, and it is aware of who chooses which. – Rappler.com

The creator is previous president of the Philippine Bar Affiliation and founding chairman of the Motion In opposition to Disinformation.