Accents
ILAC: lawyers for the people
The Iloilo Legal Assistance Center or ILAC (get it bold and all caps) establishes its organizational identity as lawyers for the people with the inauguration of its office: Rm. 209, Kahirup Bldg., Guanco St., Iloilo City, on Tuesday, Nov. 21. The practice of law and administration of justice move to great strides with seven ILAC lawyers providing legal power to the people: Attys. Janne Baterna, Steve Cercado, Sol Gamosa, Eli Guiloreza, Rudy Lagoc, Pet Melliza, and Bong San Felix--the Magnificent Seven as moviedom would have it.
Putting aside allusions to brute force, striking physique, and lightning speed that characterize the actors in the film, here in the actual world are legal personalities who tussle using brain power to lawyer for the people. They have bonded themselves together to provide legal assistance to "the least of the brethren."
An Iloilo-based group of human rights lawyers, ILAC is committed to advocacy for the poor, the deprived, the oppressed and marginalized sectors in society. It handles cases for the underprivileged--workers, farmers, indigenous people, the urban poor, women and children, the youth and students--in defense of their rights and promotion of their interests. People's organizations will find in ILAC an instrument to help achieve their legitimate demands. A venue for information that is empowering to the masses at large, its office is open to legal consultations.
Beyond court tussles, ILAC conducts seminars, lectures with fellow lawyers, and training of law students on paralegal skills, people-oriented/development lawyering, court observations, and human rights. ILAC members meet and brainstorm on current issues, and take immediate course of action. A watchdog in the violation of people's rights, it is critical of the present exploitative and oppressive system and is in the forefront of the legal struggle against said system. It brings to task the Arroyo regime that hides behind a mask of democracy--a "democratic government" that reeks of culpable violations of the constitution, extra-judicial killings, electoral fraud and cover-up, betrayal of public trust, and other high crimes.
The ILAC has been cognizant of the Arroyo government's escalation of attacks on the legal profession. The documented killings, threats, and harassments of lawyers and judges, aside from cases of murdered media persons, activists and other progressive elements, have not dispirited nor deterred ILAC's core of human rights lawyers in upholding and defending the people's democratic rights.
The escalated attacks (I enumerated in a previous column) can no longer be denied, and so on April 30, 2005, the Committee on the Defense of Lawyers or CODAL was born with individual lawyers and law groups banding together along with students and the faculty of law schools, former public officials and commissioners of government bodies, and lawyers doing private practice. CODAL counts among its members the Public Interest Law Center (PILC), Pro-People Law Network (PLN), and the Pro-Labor Legal Assistance Center (PLACE).
On June 10, 2005, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) passed a resolution on the attacks against lawyers and judges in the Philippines which was unanimously adopted by 337 lawyers, jurists, judges, justices, law professors and law students from 50 countries during its General Assembly, XVI Congress in Paris, France. The resolution states in part: "[A]dequate protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms to which all persons are entitled, xxx requires all persons [to] have effective access to legal services provided by an independent legal profession. Paragraph 18 thereof declares that 'lawyers shall not be identified with their client's causes as a result of the discharge of their functions.'
Along with the above-mentioned organizations, ILAC stands firm in upholding the unimpeded practice of law and the fair administration of justice. The inauguration of its office bespeaks deep commitment to serve the people. Onward Magnificent Seven!
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)