Upholding Social Justice vs Elitist Law and Jurisprudence

People’s lawyering – a vocation that sides with the poor’s causes over and above the pursuits of a promising career – is winning adherents among the country’s young lawyers and law students. People’s lawyering also takes challenge at the country’s jurisprudence and judicial system that, as lawyer Marie Yuviengco says, are “instrumental in exploiting the peasants and depriving them of the fruits of their hard work.”

By GERRY ALBERT-CORPUZ
Bulatlat.com

"The provisions in our constitution on the protection of life, liberty and property and on due process are not so much for those who sleep under the bridge as for those who live in luxury at Forbes Park."

Law student and para-legal worker David Erro, the executive trustee of Sentro Para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (Sentra), an NGO which has been assisting farmer groups in their legal cases against landlords over land disputes invoked this harsh reality during his speech at the first National Peasants-Lawyers Conference held last June 29-30 in Quezon City.

The conference, a collective undertaking of the peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) and Public Interest Law Center (PILC) was joined by national people's organizations like Pamalakaya (fishetfolk sector) Amihan (peasant women), National Federation of Sugar Workers (sugar workers) and Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (national minorities) was held to unite peasant associations, grassroot organizations and legal groups in addressing the problems of agrarian reform, farmers' rights and social justice.

Sentra's Erro spoke before some 200 participants mostly lawyers, law students, farmers, fisherfolk and national minorities from all regions of the country who took a two-day break from work to discuss and build a strong partnership for social justice and genuine land reform.

Social realities not in jurisprudence

Erro told conference delegates from peasant and legal sectors that social realities cannot be seen in written laws or in present agrarian jurisprudence and programs. The para-legal chief of Sentra said the principle "ignorance of the law excuses no one" has been gravely abused to keep farmers out of their farm lands.

Erro cited the case of third generation farmers in Cordon, Isabela who were asked by a lawyer if they have applied for free patent when they occupied the lands for cultivation after a rich doctor in the area claimed that the land the farmers are cultivating at present belongs to him and his family.

"How can farmers understand the meaning of free patent,” Erro said. “They were never told or taught what it exactly means."

Poverty and landlessness have reduced farmers as plain producers of wealth for the landlords and the privileged few. "But their ‘ignorance’ of so-called laws and jurisprudence has been largely exploited at the expense of their rights and welfare at the behest of so-called landlords and the ‘learned and academic men.’ That's double whammy."

"Peasants don't know free patent, if they know free patent, they would be surprised to learn that free patent is merely an expression of right, but the right will be determined by the courts, halls of congress and state agencies saturated by big landlords or farmers' class enemies," the Sentra officer said. "The history of agrarian laws, programs and jurisprudence in the country is the history of how a motley group of landlords managed to exploit the single biggest class in the Philippines. It is high time for lawyers and future lawyers to take this as prime consideration in pushing advocacy among the ranks of the oppressed sectors in the countryside."

The call to turn the tables around in favor of marginalized farmers was echoed by Marie Yuviengco, managing counsel of the Public Interest Law Center (PILC). "Public interest lawyering or people's lawyering is not only a challenge among lawyers and soon-to-be lawyers, but an imperative as well", she said.

Yuviengco said that despite administrative constraints, manpower limitations and financial difficulties, public interest lawyering will thrive and continue to remain relevant because of continuing need for this kind of legal work under the present social, economic and political set-up.

"As lawyers, we have to push for the parameters of the law in the service of the interests of the oppressed and exploited like millions of Filipino farmers wanting our free, determined and all-out support to their plight and fight," she added.

Every lawyer, she said, should look into the current social, economic and political situation to contextualize what she meant by people's lawyering. "The legal system, the court procedures as parts of the superstructure are instrumental in exploiting the peasants and depriving them of the fruits of their hard work. We can be true lawyers of the people if we take a strong and legitimate bias to their cause and concerns," she stressed.

Law students from the Law Students Forum organized by the human rights watchdog Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace (EMJP) also told conference participants that the criminalization of agrarian cases was effectively used to put struggling peasants behind bars.

The Forum stated: "By criminalizing agrarian cases, the fundamental issue concerning the peasants struggle for land is effectively obscured and buried beneath the farcical issue of whether or not the accused is guilty of the crime charged against him. If convicted, the landless peasant becomes twice the victim of injustice- he was not given the land he deserves to own and he was convicted of a crime he did not commit".

Joint workshops

Lawyers and rural sector participants were grouped into several workshop groups to discuss among themselves the legal issues involved particularly on cases of massive land grabbing, privatization and conversion of coastal areas, the impact of IPRA on national minorities, the fate of the P130 billion coconut levy fund and criminalization of agrarian cases."

One of the resolutions approved during the conference was the integration of lawyers and law students to the overall fight of the farmers and rural sectors for land reform and social justice.

Danilo Ramos, KMP secretary general, said the conference ended on a happy note as all participants agreed on several areas of cooperation and partnership that would build stronger working relations and linkages among peasant and legal associations in the Philippines. He also said that "often farmers are pitted against influential landlords and corporations who can afford to hire the best lawyers while even the judges in most cases are biased to landlords' eternal thirst for lands.

"In the conference, legal practitioners, law students and para-legal activists took their oath to take the side of the farmers and mobilize themselves in defending peasants' land rights against the landed aristocrats, Ramos said. Bulatlat.com

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