The long legal life of Ipaglaban Mo

Ipaglaban Mo is a weekly dramatization of actual cases brought and settled in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, tackling a wide range of issues meant to inform and educate the masses. Hosted by the father and son partnership of lawyers Jose Sison and Jopet Sison, Ipaglaban Mo offers real-life lessons that have made it one of the longest-running drama shows on Philippine TV, one of the top-raters and an awardee at the Catholic Mass Media Awards (CMMA).

Fifteen years after the show ended, the legal drama returned on June 7, airing Saturdays, still hosted by the Sisons but with a different episodic look. In the episode Buong Tapang na Lalaban, for instance, Trina Legaspi portrays a college student who was raped by a man she met via text messaging. What does the law say about the crime of rape?

In Haligi ng Tahanan, Dominic Roco’s character is faced with a problem difficult to solve. When his wife (played by Glaiza de Castro) died while giving birth, Dominic is certain he will have a hard time taking care of the children all by himself. Who has the rights to the children?

In I am Your Mother, Vina Morales plays a loving adoptive doctor mother to Raikko Mateo, a child born with polio. Due to poverty, Raikko’s biological mother Desiree del Valle left him with Vina at her clinic. In legal parlance, who has custody rights to the child?

There are so many other episodes dealing with similar problems, but the fact that they come out of the mouths of various individuals with their own divergent solutions makes each case unique in itself. From a list of episode titles, one can already figure out the focus of the storyteller. There is Hindi Ko Sinasadya Yaya, Ako ang Biktima, Umasa Ako sa Hula, Sa Aking Pagbangon, and Paano na ang Pangarap.

Since we were curious to find out more about the father-son tandem, we asked them for the simplest biography. Jose was born on April 7, 1938, is married and has six children. He graduated from UST and Ateneo, was admitted to the Philippine Bar with a grade of 84.9 percent. The elder Sison pioneered in the first journalistic legal education in the country, spreading knowledge of the law beyond the confines of the courtrooms, law offices and law schools, to all sectors of society up to the grassroots level.

Jopet was born on Oct. 19, 1965, is married and has three children. He graduated Bachelor of Law at the Manuel L. Quezon University. Still a student when the show started airing, Jopet was inspired by his dad’s work and would tag along during tapings. “The stories aired initially were about family relation cases,” he related. “Of course, you’d learn that these would be the issues and lessons, and there would be the endings. Eventually, you’d learn how to relate to the family members because of the lessons.”

It was the late newscaster Jose Mari Velez who saw the potential of the elder Sison’s column A Law Each Day (which you can read in this paper’s Opinion page) becoming a TV show because of its common touch. The show currently airs every Saturday on GMA News TV with the Sisons hosting. With its huge mass appeal, ABS-CBN, through Star Cinema, decided to produce two movies also adapted from sensational cases reported in The STAR column. These were likewise successful.

Off the air, the law office of the Sisons in Greenhills is a veritable refuge for people seeking free solutions to assorted legal problems. Jopet related, “There was a time when we’d have four or five walk-in clients seeking legal advice; we had to limit the free legal advice to one day of the week so we could leave some portions of the week for work at the office.”

Out of the limelight, Jose and Jopet are simply devoted family men. For the growing Sison family, weekends are not complete without the requisite family lunch, and sitting in front of the TV to watch yet another heartrending drama unfold in Ipaglaban Mo.

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