IBP head may face ouster for spray paint flip-flop

They are angry and they want the head of their leader.

The president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) may lose his post as most of the group's 40,000 members have expressed their dissatisfaction over their leader's flip-flop on their stand opposing the spray-painting campaign of Interior Secretary Alfredo Lim.

Former IBP spokesman Leonard de Vera revealed this yesterday after receiving several telephone calls from IBP chapters, calling for a convention of its house of delegates to discuss the sudden turnaround of IBP president Arthur Lim.

The IBP, under its former president had originally opposed the scarlet letter drive, but Lim withdrew the lawyers' group's petition a day after the Court of Appeals declared the campaign as unconstitutional.

"Many lawyers have called me up and they were very disgusted and disappointed," De Vera said.

Lim had said that the IBP's petition to the appellate court was not in keeping with the present leadership's views.

"The petition assailing the legality of the spray-painting campaign was filed way back in 1997 by the (Jose Aguila) Grapilon board," Lim wrote in his three-page manifestation to the CA.

When he assumed the IBP presidency on July 1999, Lim said that the board did not do anything about it because the case was still pending before the Court of Appeals.

However, several lawyers are questioning why Lim made the move in haste.

"Why the rush, the haste and the secrecy?" De Vera asked.

"Many lawyers have approached me," De Vera said. "The IBP is becoming a laughingstock and the butt of a hundred jokes. You are a leader only if you have the confidence of your members."

Four other groups asked the Court of Appeals to junk the motion of the IBP president.

"Lim's individual position as unilaterally declared does not reflect or give faith to the overwhelming sentiment and principled position of the broad ranks of the legal profession who have vowed to uphold the rule of law especially against the incursions on civil liberties of the people," the four groups said in their joint five-page motion.

Besides the IBP, the groups which filed opposition to the IBP chief's move were the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), the Public Interest Law Center (PILC), the Progressive Labor Organization (Pro-Labor) and the Movement of Attorneys for Brotherhood, Integrity and Nationalism Inc. (Mabini).

In their five-page motion, they said the IBP president's action was violative of the IBP's rules, which require concurrence by at least its board of governors.

"The issues involved in the instant case are so fundamental and highly imbued with public interest, so much so that a decision by the IBP to withdraw its petition ... could not be accomplished merely by a motion filed by its president, or even, a resolution by the board to this effect," said PILC chairman Romeo Capulong, who also heads the IBP's committee on human rights and due process.

Capulong explained that the "legal issues involved transcend the transient opinions and sentiments of the present leadership of the IBP."

The IBP, together with the Commission on Human Rights and Mabini, recently won a suit against the interior secretary, who recently revived his scarlet letter campaign first carried out in Manila when he was still city mayor. -- With Nestor Etolle, Jerry Botial, Sandy Araneta