His is not just the story of a local boy who made good. His is the inspiring story of a young boy from Siasi, who became a lawyer with principles and accomplishments that should have long placed him in the service of the nation that badly needs bright, good and honest men.
I’d known Ancheta K. Tan in the 1950s when we were contemporaries at Silliman University in Dumaguete City. He was the top student there at the time. But not until I came across his autobiography entitled A Son’s Story – written only for relatives’ and valued friends’ consumption – did I realize his story is worth writing volumes about.
I asked him if he had ever eyed the Supreme Court – the apex of practically all lawyers’ aspirations – or holding a Cabinet position. No, he said, what concerned him during his years of lawyering, was giving his best in the practice of law.
He writes with humility, but with pride too, about his successful law practice. Let me quote him: “When I set out to pursue a law career as a founding partner of my firm, I did so as a thoroughly professional man. I expected to immerse myself in the norms and canons of practicing lawyers. This meant that from dawn to dusk, I would breathe and think the law and how it is to be applied in the best interest of a client in any contested case.
“To borrow the words of a Jurist, this was practicing law ‘in a grand manner.’ For more than 40 years, I aimed to do just that, in the belief that an honorable lawyer is indispensable to the dispensation of justice.”
Yet, as he accumulated years absorbing the skills shaped by active practice, he came to the conclusion that “this is achievable only in an environment that is equally unsullied.“
“I believed that this applied to the entire spectrum of government. I certainly grew in the conviction that the principle of the Rule of Law is the guiding star of governance. Otherwise, a desecration of this principle in any branch of government is infectious and would gnaw at the foundations of the rest of the bureaucracy. This is a situation that has to be guarded against.”
One time, this came to pass. This was the day the House of Representatives tried “to railroad” a second impeachment against Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. “Because the second complaint was filed within one year of the first, it clearly violated the Constitution, “and yet Congress was going to go ahead with it.” In their rage, he and his law firm partner Polo Pantaleon, put out a one-page ad in The Philippine STAR, under the bold heading “STOP CONGRESSIONAL TERRORISM.”
In the ensuing years, more issues would engulf the nation, writes Ancheta. But nothing had a graver impact than the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012. “When the impeachment case progressed to trial by the Senate, I applauded the work of the House of Representatives. I eagerly awaited the unfolding drama.” While waiting for developments, he read advertisements put out by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines clearing the Chief Justice of no wrongdoing before he could be tried by the Senate.
Believing it was an unacceptable “whitewash,” he and Atty. Pantaleon put out an ad in The Philippine STAR under the heading, “LET THE IMPEACHMENT PROCESS RUN ITS COURSE.” They were pleasantly surpised when many came on board and signed the statement.
“The rest is history. But my role in the publication of that statement on the impeachment will not be the last. For as long as there are worthwhile issues to take a stand on, and other comrades who share a similar predisposition, I shall do my share, however small, in exorcising the ills of our legal system.”
Ancheta’s future was predicted upon his birth on May 8, 1941, in Siasi, one of the many islands comprising the province of Sulu, to Kiandiong Mainni Tan and Diampun Jaham Kong. When he, one of 11 children, left his mother’s womb, the roosters the family kept in the yard crowed excitedly. Then the neighbors joined the chorus of sounds. A Muslim priest later told Chet’s mother, “The excited crowing of the cocks foretold great challenges and opportunities for your son.”
The challenges the young Chet faced squarely as he topped his grade school and high school classes. He set out for Silliman in Dumaguete where he earned his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude and received the university honors and most outstanding senior awards.
He was on full Commission on National Integration scholarship when he entered the University of the Philippines in Diliman to study law. At the UP he was appointed chair of the Law Register in his sophomore year, editor-in-chief of The Philippine Collegian, vice-chair of the Philippine Law Journal, and university councilor in the UP Student Council.
Chet devotes pages to a passage in his campus life, when he was a member of the Upsilon Sigma Phi, which gave him a taste of the “social chic.” He was no stranger to fun and games, as in high school, in Siasi, he was an admirer of Elvis Presley, driving him to grow sideburns and wear low-waist pants with a three-inch crotch.
While waiting for the result of the bar exams (which he passed with a general average of 81.85 percent), he was taken in by Estelito P. Mendoza of the law firm Mendoza & Hernandez. He moved on to join Sycip Salazar Manalo & Feliciano where he spent 12 years in “rigorous legal counseling and lawyering for a varied clientele.”
In 1981, he accepted the invitation to be a partner in the Castillo Laman Tan & Pantaleon law firm, now one of five prominent law firms in the country. In 1997, the firm was voted by Asialaw Magazine the “Regional Law Firm of the Year,” and cited in Euromoney as the “World’s leading labor and employment lawyer.”
Attorney Tan became president of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) which took up the cudgels for employers in the country, and president of the ASEAN Confederation of Employers (ACE). Only when he was later elected a Titular Member of the International Labor Organization in 1996, did he fully realize the impact of the ILO on the world of employment, the welfare of the working class, and the paternal responsibility of governments to their people.
Chet relishes a sense of fulfillment in the advancement of his children. His eldest daughter Yasmin placed among the top ten successful bar examinees and graduated with a masters degree from Harvard. She now lives with her husband Andy Schleider and their children in Singapore.
Second daughter Marinisa graduated with merit from the London School of Economics, and lives with her husband, Matthias Ringel and their children in Brussels.
Chet Jr. completed the loop by graduating with a master of laws degree from George Washington, D.C. He is a senior associate at CLTPSJ.
Chet still adores Cora de Jesus, his wife of 46 years. While her husband was in pursuit of fame and fortune, Cora took care of the kids, helped run a catering business, worked for a master’s degree in women’s development, and became president of the Inner Wheel and Zonta clubs. “She is a true woman of substance, besides being blessed with a classic beauty and intelligence – Aphrodite and Athena combined,” says Chet.
With fortune and time in his hands, he travels abroad frequently with Cora, and writes poetry.
Chet thinks with gladness of his father and his mother, for whom he wrote his book A Son’s Story.
* * *
E-mail: dominitorrevillas@gmail.com