MVP to speak before ASEAN legal luminaries

MANILA, Philippines - • Manuel V. Pangilinan, managing director and CEO of First Pacific and chairman of Philex Mining Corp., will by next month talk before a regional law organization about the challenges that the country’s business sector faces, in view of the basic objectives for this year’s economic integration of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). “As one of the most respected and influential business leaders in the Philippines, we will be honored if you would express your views on the challenges posed to Philippine business and constituency by the “Blueprint of ASEAN Economic Community [AEC], ” Avelino Cruz, regional VP of the ASEAN Law Association (ALA), said in an invite to Pangilinan.

The occasion is the Feb. 28 farewell-dinner reception at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel in honor of the ASEAN chief justices, bar-society leaders, deans of law, government lawyers, and all other delegates to the 12th ALA General Assembly, the first to be held here since 1995, which formally opens Feb. 26.

Being the goal of regional economic integration for 2015, the AEC was one of the three ministerial bodies established by the ASEAN Charter when it was enacted in 2007 to establish ASEAN as a formal organization with a distinct legal personality. The two others were ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC) Council and ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) Council.

Cruz, who is also chairman and president of ALA Philippines, said the ASEAN chief justices and select ALA officials will make a courtesy call on President Aquino on Feb. 27, the third day of the four-day general assembly, and before they head to the world-famous island of Boracay in the Visayas for the Summit Meeting of all ASEAN chief justices on March 1-2.

He added that preparations for the Feb. 25-28 general assembly of ALA, founded in 1979 and designated in the ASEAN Charter of 2007 as the regional bloc’s only civil society affiliate for law, have been completed, including the holding of six workshops for Filipino lawyers, through the conference theme “Sharing Prosperity at the Crossroads of ASEAN Integration—the Legal Challenges.”

“Thus, the workshops will address, among other things, the legal implications on the ASEAN integration of cross-border practices and commercial laws of the ASEAN legal community, as well as such fundamentals as commercial arbitration, free access to courts, and the rights of citizens to justice within the ASEAN countries,” Cruz stressed.

Touching on all subjects of the MCLE, or Mandatory Continuing Legal Education, the workshops are on Legal Profession, Alternative Dispute Resolution, International Law, Business Law, Trade & Investment, and Legal Education. The paper writers and chairmen of these workshops will come from the 10 ASEAN countries.

He added that ALA Philippines has worked closely with the preparations done by Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno as host for the Boracay summit. The separate meetings on Boracay are on-track, and will not be attended only by ALA officials and delegates as guests, but also by members of the Supreme Court.