Lawyering

Daniel Guttierez, chief counsel to his brod Greg Honasan, adds credence to the worst things said about lawyers.

Honasan’s lawyer says they have no reason to respond to the subpoena issued the senator because the document was not served to him personally. The DOJ served the subpoena to the senator’s office – which is a fixed location. At the moment, no one could fix Honasan’s location.

The senator, as we all know, has not been to his office. Nor is he in hiding, by his own semantic obscurantism. He has simply made himself inaccessible.

Now we know the point of his being inaccessible. It allows his lawyers to tie up the justice system in knots. It allows the fugitive senator to choose the time and place for him to make a phone patched announcement to his media organization of choice. Yet it prevents the authorities from summoning him to answer vital questions about a rebellion that just happened.

This is not hide and seek. It is cat and mouse.

The wheels of justice are mired in a bog of contrived technicalities induced by the connivance of shrewd lawyers and even shrewder clients. The rule of law is not being upheld here. It is being mocked.

Being a senator, with a shrewd lawyer like DannyGut, Greg Honasan may make himself inaccessible to sheriffs bearing subpoenas. Ordinary mortals, with an inferior grasp of the English language, simply go into hiding.

But there is more to what is happening than this case of lawyerly craftiness.

In the aftermath of a failed coup attempt, the lawyers seemed to have taken over the ramparts, waging a propaganda war on behalf of clients caught in flagrante delicto.

We have heard of trial by publicity. The wild bunch of lawyers mustered on behalf of the mutineers and their civilian supporters now seem to be engaged in exculpation by publicity.

On behalf of mutineers who disturbed the nation’s peace, we have now arrayed before us what is probably an unprecedented army of the most voluble lawyers – not counting the legislators effectively lawyering on behalf of the destablizers. Most of them claim to be serving pro bono. At least one is named Homobono.

On the night Ramon Cardena’s house in Dasmarinas was raided, Rene Saguisag was immediately available to denounce that vital act of law enforcement. He made the improbable claim that the huge pile of coup-related paraphernalia found in that house was planted and that the raid was conducted without a warrant.

It was later established that the raid, the contingencies notwithstanding, was properly covered by a warrant and, in fact, prompted by a complaint by the village security guards in the first place. A video clip released by the mutineers themselves was later shown to have been taken in the Cardenas house.

That video clip is a marvel in and of itself. Before moving out to wreak havoc, the mutineers decided to immortalize themselves by posing ala Katipuneros before a blood-stained Philippine flag. They were all, of course, donning spanking new uniforms and every imaginable accessory for an activity like this one.

If we do not want to call this a coup, we might as well concede this was a major theatrical production indulged in by the vainest of men. I am nearly sure there was a costume director involved in purchasing the accoutrements: high-tech radios, bright red armbands, expensive knives, black golf caps and camel backpacks.

Speaking of accoutrements, the mutineers carelessly left behind at the Oakwood delivery receipts for their goodies. The receipts led investigators to a house in San Juan that, of all coincidences, was used as office by Jinggoy Estrada.

The Estrada camp quickly claimed that intelligence personnel casing the place were there to plant evidence. Since the house was registered in another person’s name, investigators found out only later that the former San Juan mayor used the place.

Another house full of coup paraphernalia was raided after baranggay officials reported that mutinous soldiers emanated from it before taking Oakwood. The house was registered under the name of Liezl Magpoc, who later issued an affidavit saying that the real and beneficial owner of the place was Estrada mistress Laarni Enriquez.

Enriquez’s lawyer, Rufus Rodriguez, is now telling us that the raid was illegal, the evidence was planted and the entire thing was an effort to implicate the deposed president. In a word, this is a charade undertaken for purposes of political persecution.

Rodriguez was immigrations commissioner during Estrada’s time. If his claims are extrapolated, we will soon be arguing over whether the entire Oakwood affair was not a brilliant ploy for the administration to rally support around itself and persecute the opposition.

Another detachment of this symphony of lawyers is virtually camped out at the gates of the Isafp compound, waiting to be interviewed by journalists. There, they complain about every inconvenience their spoiled brat clients are made to endure – everything from shortened visiting hours to the inability to hold a birthday bash for imprisoned Lt. Trillanes.

This detachment are now trying to convince all who would listen that evidence is being manufactured to implicate their clients, that the civilian courts should not try the mutineers and that witnesses are being bribed to provide derogatory statements.

All the chatter emanating from this detachment of lawyers amounts to one thing: they want special treatment for the mutineers. They want them to be handled with kid gloves, pampered at public expense and provided an open platform for their demagoguery.

By comparison, the coup plotters involved in the attempts against our democracy during the late eighties were treated more harshly. They were hounded went they went into hiding. Their lairs were raided brusquely. In detention, they were held incommunicado and interrogated endlessly.

And yet the Davide Commission concluded that the persistence of coup attempts has been due principally to the laxity with which conspirators in this unwholesome activity have been treated by the authorities.

It is that laxity that encouraged the yuppie officers of the Magdalo conspiracy to indulge in an upscale, thoroughly yuppie version of a coup attempt. Now the plotters are demanding the same laxity that caused the moral hazard in the first place.

All this is happening mainly because the event of a failed coup has become an occasion for a convention of the most vociferous lawyers in town – those willing and able to turn the truth inside out on a pure technicality.