ONE STEP BEYOND
by Michael Vincent Gaddi
Salvador Santos is a simple coconut farmer from Padre Burgos, Quezon who lived peacefully with his family and harvested coconuts from several trees he had planted. Just as he had grown accustomed to this worry-free life, trouble struck. Sometime in 1997 the land owner suddenly filed a barrage of criminal cases against him some for rather serious crimes like qualified theft and cattle rustling. Santos was both surprised and confused, not knowing the reasons behind the land owner’s actions. Surprise and confusion were joined by apprehension as to the security and well being of his family when the police finally arrived one day to apprehend him. He was detained for two years while the cases against him were being heard. While he was in jail, his coconut trees were cut upon the orders of the landowner which forced his children to stop schooling as the harvest from these trees was the only means of their family. Soon thereafter, their house was burned down by unknown persons which ultimately forced his family to flee from the land.
Santos was one of the lucky ones, though. He was eventually acquitted of all the charges. Fortunately for Santos, his case was acted upon by fellow farmers who were trained in paralegal skills, who developed the theory of his case, gathered evidence, located witnesses and performed other legal tasks that normally would have required a lawyer. Unfortunately, Santos had utterly lost all of his property and returned to find his family living in fear. Still he is thankful for the help of his fellow farmers, he says that without them his very freedom might not have ever been regained, and at least with that, he could rebuild and restore what once was present.
One of the farmer paralegals who helped Santos during those trying times was Ireneo Cerilla, a.k.a. Ka Rene. Ka Rene hails from a place where injustice truly thrives. Quezon being an agricultural province, wide-spread violations of agrarian reform laws abound its towns. Landlords still apply the outlawed share tenancy system and file harassment criminal cases against their tenants to muscle them out of the lands they till. In all of these instances to which Ka Rene was witness, not one of the farmers involved was ever represented by a lawyer chosen by the farmer. His conclusion then was that it was true what they said that the law was not blind and that the legal system favored the rich.
His attitude changed soon enough. In1987 two NGOs- Organizing for Rural Development (ORD) and the Center for Community Services (CCS), started organizing various farmers’ organizations in several twons in Quezon. One part of the organizing activities was a paralegal training for agrarian reform implementation. Having finished his secondary schooling at the Eastern Tayabas College and a one year vocational course at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in his hometown Lopez, Quezon, Ka Rene was a rather obvious choice. He was relatively well-educated, young and was raring to win one for the farmers he had seen victimized before. In the paralegals training he met a certain, Atty. Bobby Gana, who was also from an NGO named SALIGAN or Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panligal. Ka Rene would later learn that Atty. Gana placed fifth in the 1987 bar exams yet chose to forego a life of financial security in order to work with farmers and other poor folk. Ka Rene fondly remembers how the knowledge that he was not the only one who had given up something for the training would impel him to travel twice a week from Quezon Province to Quezon City, just so he can submit the homework Atty. Gana gave him as part of his initial paralegal training which began in 1991. Atty. Gana would also give him both oral and written exams on agrarian reform laws.
It seems these afternoons with Atty. Gana paid off when he handled his first case at the DARAB (Department of Agrarian Reform Adjudication Board) in 1995. He recalls it was a leasehold case where the opposing counsel was none other than his uncle who was one of the handful of lawyers in Lopez. After the case, the people in Lopez started referring to him as the other Atty. Cerilla. Since then, Ka Rene has been actively practicing as a paralegal volunteer for and in behalf of his fellow farmers in Quezon. Not even a rare illness, which left him practically paralyzed for six in 1998 could stop him. He recalls that he had to will himself into moving again because other farmers needed him.
It is heartening to note that Ka Rene is not alone. Literally hundreds of community based paralegals like him exist and practice in the Philippines. These paralegals have been trained under the Paralegal Education Skills Advancement and Networking Technology (PESANTEch) Program. It is a program that is celebrating its Tenth anniversary this August.
Some ten years ago, PESANTEch was hatched up by the late Atty. Bobby Gana of SALIGAN and civil society pioneer Gerry Bulatao of KAISAHAN. Both men saw that agrarian reform was moving at a very slow pace and that slowness was made even slower by the use of the landlords of the law and legal system to thwart agrarian reform. Farmers are especially at a loss when confronted at a court of law, they could not afford lawyers, are ignorant about the proceedings much less the law. True enough, very few lawyers choose to practice in rural areas. Of the handful that do practice there, practically none would offer their services to farmers, opting instead to serve the wealthier landed class. Gana and Bulatao saw an opportunity rather than despair in the situation. Their idea was that legal knowledge and skills need not be monopolized and that both of these could be passed on to the true stakeholders of agrarian reform, the farmers.
Gana and Bulatao’s idea has endured for ten years. It is now being implemented by three alternative legal institutions namely: SALIGAN (Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panligal), KAISAHAN (Kaisahan Tungo sa Kaunlaran sa Kanayunan), and BALAOD-MINDANAW (Balay Alternative Legal Advocates for Development in Mindanaw). It covers 232 barangays in 45 cities and municipalities nationwide. Close to almost five thousand paralegals (of which around 1250 are active) have been trained and have seen action both in and out of the legal battlefield. PESANTEch is proud to have in its ranks paralegals who have beaten full-fledged lawyers before administrative tribunals, who could draft legal forms and pleadings with minimal supervision, conduct negotiations and make claims before government, draft ordinances for local governments, etc. All of these are being done in the spirit of solidarity and volunteerism.
Ka Rene, remember one time that he almost gave it all up. At the middle of his brief paralysis in 1998 he learned that his mentor and friend, Atty. Bobby Gana had died in Cebu Pacific Flight 387 that crashed into a mountain in Misamis Oriental. Atty. Gana was on his way to Cagayan de Oro to attend to other paralegals trained under PESANTEch. Accompanying him was Atty. Caloy Ollado, also of SALIGAN. He too perished. Ka Rene though knew that giving up would have been the last thing that Atty. Gana would have wanted him to do.
Thus after recovering from his temporary paralysis, Ka Rene pushed on. From 2001 to 2005, Ka Rene sat as a member of the board of directors of the Coconut Industry Investment Fund of the United Coconut Planters Bank and fought for the rightful remittance of a portion of the coconut levy fund to thousands of coconut farmers nationwide. However, he was ousted from said position because he opposed propositions to compromise the coco levy. Now, Ka Rene continues with his paralegal work, going around Quezon Province and doing what he does best.