A blur

The past days have been a blur as I undertake periodic fraternal duties for family members running for office. Because my candidates are in legislative districts from different local government units, I’ve had to hustle between sites five hours apart, by land, during non-peak hours.

I’ve spoken before small (350 minimum) and medium sized crowds (upwards of 1200) in both metro and provincial settings (i.e. in the central business district one day then plop in the middle of more bucolic scenes the next). Next week will be even more toxic.

Families of aspirants across the nation identify with the hysterics. Aside from speaking engagements, there are meetings with leaders, briefings on the casting, canvass and proclamation process, giving inputs (from institutional knowledge) on everything from authority to appoint watchers, to tasking of staff, to quantity and design of ID cards. Also plans on countering (not initiating) dirty tricks, among others. These are the “just another day at the office” realities on steroids every three or six years, during campaign season.

Yesterday, I spoke Ilocano, reverentially, before a crowd of rural voters in the North. Ilocano is the dialect of my father and of our hardy Region 1 brothers and sisters who warmly embraced our inputs on matters affecting their situation. Today, I am on a float joining my brother on his grand motorcade. This is a manageable effort when your district is in Metro Manila.

This most basic act of citizenship, suffrage, is a key component of our membership in a polity. Seeing how even the more down to earth sectors value this franchise is humbling. This is a prerogative that my family deeply respects.

Bonus. When delivering spiels, I engage with our countrymen on their parochial considerations when casting their votes. Performance in Congress is not even trifled with if their representative maintains his presence in the district.

They don’t see that their selections are laboratories for higher challenges. When their representatives do good, the country takes note. Should they capture the imagination and trust of outside constituencies, the voters unwittingly contribute to the governance of the entire nation.

High fidelity. On Monday,  8,241 newly minted lawyers trek to their Olympus when they take their oaths before the Supreme Court en banc.

Inevitably, with the rest of the legal academe, I’ve been treated to glorification of the recent Bar, the Best Bar Ever (BBE). I lend my voice to applauding one of its biggest triumphs, the regionalization of the exam.

Of course, this was an idea whose time had come. The journey toward regionalization became a victim of its own success. Victory being claimed by 100 fathers, we see the varying origin stories in media, social media and official events tweaking the truth. Brings to mind the parable of the blind men and the elephant.

As far as legal education reform efforts go, regionalization was a tale as old as time. Evelyn Macairan of The Philippine STAR as early as May 3, 2020 published the story acknowledging the tortuous route it took.

As a past president of the Philippine Association of Law Schools (PALS), I can attest that the desire for regionalization coming from the non-Metro Manila schools had the backing of all. Since 2007, almost every year thereafter, the University of Cebu law school sounded the call. At PALS events, specially our assemblies at the annual Bar exams, regionalization was usually on the menu courtesy of their indefatigable Dean Baldomero Estenzo.

In that first decade of the 2000s, the number of law schools outside of Metro Manila had still not warranted regionalization of the exams on considerations of scale. After all, for the longest time, legal education in the Philippines was Metro Manila centric. PALS was established by only 12 pioneer law schools in 1967 with only one from out of Metro Manila, the University of San Jose Recoletos law school. There were Visayas and Mindanao law schools but the bulk was still Metro Manila and Luzon.

As member of Supreme Court Committee on Legal Education and Bar Matters in 2012, we already tackled the topic. As more law schools sprouted up in the Visayas and Mindanao, the Court was deluged with letter communications to regionalize. The Committee decided against recommending the same to the en banc at the time. This ultimately led to the filing of a direct petition with the Supreme Court.

As PALS grew with the times and the Legal Education Board was activated, there were renewed efforts from successive law schools to revitalize the Estenzo initiative. They met varying levels of success in actual consideration by the Court.

In truth, successive law school leaderships could barely breathe from the yoke of contentious regulation issues concerning curriculum, qualification standards, LLM requirements, et. al., to even prioritize regionalization. The attitude was that it was a challenge the court was not prepared to take. The specter of past episodes of Bar exam leakages that blew up to warrant national headlines still haunted many.

But the progressive relaxation of stance of the successive Chief Justices was palpable. Ultimately, a confluence of factors made it happen. One, the dynamic can-do PALS leadership of the time made the fortuitous decision to make regionalization one of its first advocacies; two, they got Justice Marvic Leonen as Chair and, three, the undeniable march of technological progress.

The Court finally took the leap of faith and the rest is history.

With my past front seat to the elephant, I have a broader if not an older perspective. Excitable attempts to celebrate the celebratable coming even from the well intentioned tend to see only the tip of the iceberg. In the end, we could really benefit from the heft of more accurate narratives, for the sake of honoring the efforts of all who played a part.

Again congratulations lawyers from Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao and Metro Manila and all who have been instrumental in the success of the 2020-2021 Bar exams.