Friday, March 28, 2008 Malilong: PAO and those eight lawyers By Frank Malilong The Other Side
THE case of the eight former public attorneys in Cebu isn’t a simple employment issue. It’s deeper than that and it strikes at the very heart of their former agency’s mandate as a key player in the administration of justice.
So the contracts of the lawyers have expired and the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) is not willing to renew them. Ordinarily, we can live with that and I am sure the eight can. As early as in the first year in law school, students are already taught that consent to a contract must be freely given.
And, without sounding too immodest, unemployment is the least of a lawyer’s concerns. I do not think the eight will go down groveling for re-appointment because only the PAO can bring food to their table.
In fact, the Office of the Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas has already indicated that it is willing to hire the displaced attorneys. How’s that for expression of confidence in their integrity and competence?
The PAO obviously doesn’t share the same high estimation of its former employees, which is why it did not offer the latter a renewal. Fine. After all, who to hire or fire is a recognized management prerogative and we can only but bow to its (in the seven’s case, her) discretion.
Except that we’re not dealing with a company owned and run by private stakeholders but a public office funded by people’s money. Thus, absolute discretion must surrender to the higher interest of public scrutiny. No less than the lawyer’s bible--–the constitution--–demands transparency in public office.
And so the Ombudsman must do something more than just offer jobs to the concerned lawyers and the PAO must do something more than just airily dismiss the whole episode as an “expiration of contract.” The people from whose pockets come the money that keeps the PAO alive deserve no less.
Why were the appointments allowed to lapse without the PAO offering a renewal? It couldn’t have been that the agency is over-staffed otherwise it wouldn’t have hired replacements. These are people who have a minimum six months of experience in the agency and have presumably absorbed its ethos. Why were they ditched?
On the other hand, of the many lawyers in the PAO, why are there only eight that the agency decided to let go? Are there integrity issues involved? If so, whose?
By the way, I checked with Cebu City Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) president Briccio “Titing” Boholst yesterday if the IBP has taken a position in the controversy and he said that they are in the process of making one. I hope they’ll do it sooner.
We have been quick to give our take on many issues, mostly political ones, in the past so there is no reason why we cannot be as decisive in this one, which is closest to the IBP’s reason for existence.
Early this month, a reader, Elmer Gestopa, wrote from California, saying he “admired” Mayor Tommy Osmeña’s diatribe against the IBP. You keep quiet on many important issues but when a criminal is killed, “a howl of protest pours like rain from lawyers,” Gestopa wrote. So there you go gentlemen and ladies; you have your job cut for you.
(As I was about to write my concluding paragraph, Titing called to say that the IBP board will discuss the issue during its meeting on Tuesday. His vice president, Mike Yu, confirmed Titing’s information in a later call. Thank you, both for the prompt action).
