Profit with honor, productivity with social justice

Tomorrow, Saturday, I am speaking before 3,000 lawyers from Western and Eastern Visayas, here in Cebu City, in their joint convention to be graced by no less than Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo. The topic assigned to me is provocatively entitled “Profit with honor, productivity with justice and equity”. I am excited as I have prepared landmark statutes and jurisprudence to discuss for two hours.

This topic calls on us to achieve a balance between producing material wealth on the one hand, and the challenge of distributing this wealth among all members of human society, on the other hand. The need for a balance is driven by a higher purpose of achieving peace for it is assumed that when there is imbalance in possessions and powers, the strong, the wealthy and the powerful tend to abuse, exploit, and oppress the weak, the poor, and the powerless. The role of law and of government is to formulate rules and processes that will, more or less, give every component of human society, equal opportunity to aspire for a not necessarily equal share to any property or power. That is the difference between communism and democracy. Communism wants absolute equality even for the lazy, the reckless, and the overly indulgent. Democracy calls for equal reward for those with equal efforts and equal competence.

Lawyers have very crucial responsibilities to pursue, defend, and maintain such institutions that guarantee equal opportunity for those who have equal quantum of initiatives, industry, and capability. Lawyers should support social legislations and not oppose statutes like agrarian reform, abolition of family dynasties, diffusion of wealth ownership, possession and use, gradually moderating the concentration of social, economic and political powers. Lawyers are in the Senate, in the House, are occupying positions of powers and influence in Malacañang, and above all, all judges, justices, prosecutors, and solicitors are lawyers. They should be able to leverage their authority and power in order to attain what Justice Laurel called "humanization of all laws" and equalization of forces in society if they truly believe that the welfare of the people is the supreme law.

Lawyers should defend the causes of the tenants and the laborers, the migrant workers who were cheated by their recruiters and abused by their foreign employers, the women who were subjected to violence by their spouses, husbands, lovers, or both. Lawyers, even if they represent giant law firms with big corporate accounts should not allow themselves to be used by unscrupulous taipans in order to violate workers' rights, bust the unions, or commit unabated unfair labor practices. Lawyers should not only refuse to delay man for money or for malice. They should fight malice, bad faith, and all forms of schemes and machinations to deprive workers of what is due them under law and equity. Lawyers should not only fight injustice but must be advocates for the promotion of social justice and equity for all.

Those in government should make sure that we look at the problems of high inflation and high prices of food and facilities because the main victims are the poor. The lawyers in government should look at the cases that are pending in courts and in the labor tribunals for many, many years, because the victims of delay are the poor. They win cases but many lawyers are obstructing the execution of final judgments. There are still arbiters and commissioners who are lazy, inept, and uncaring. They behave like magistrates in high courts who have no compassion for poor litigants who are waiting, hungry, and angry, outside the corridors of their cozy offices. They do not even feel the pains of the working class.

I will thus challenge all the lawyers and remind them that those with less in life, should have more in law. They should remember what Justice Enrique Fernando said that labor law adjudications should not only be "secundum rationem" but also "secundum caritatem". Above all, I will conscientize them by calling to mind what the Lord warned: "Whatever you do the least of my brethren, verily, you do it unto me." Whether the lawyers will listen to me or not, what matters most is that I have said my piece, and I have done my share. I am a lawyer, by the way, and I am a lifetime member of the IBP Cebu City Chapter.