Marie Yuvienco: Maybe we shouldn’t kill all the lawyers after all

Long ago, former Chief Justice Ramon Avanceña delighted his granddaughter, Marie Yuvienco, with tales of the dusty hardbound law books that lined his study. Back in World War II, he would say, when American B-17 bombers hovered in the sky like enormous hummingbirds, the books were used as air raid shelter material. No doubt, many already visualized lawyers themselves as being a more expendable buffer against the 500-lb. bombs. Fortunately, little Marie was cheerfully oblivious to the cynicism accorded her future profession.

In high school, Marie Yuvienco wanted to become an economist. Baba Avanceña, her favorite aunt and an economist with the Central Bank, sagely dispensed with the usual condescension grown-ups reserve for teenagers and instead steeped Yuvienco in the arcane concepts of fiscal and monetary policy. She also idolized Solita "Winnie" Monsod, the tart-tongued economist who at the time few dared call mare. But it was the much-maligned immersion trips in college–guilt relief for the elite, they were called–that opened Yuvienco’s eyes to the possibility of a more hands-on-the-plow, less theoretical vocation.

"In St. Paul College, I think my introduction to law was basically my exposure to oppression. Our theology teachers would bring us to exposure trips and outreach programs. We came into contact with the urban poor, the peasants, the workers and we realized what the real world was like. In most situations in their communities, they would need the services of lawyers. At that time, I thought there was a dearth of human rights lawyers. As far as I could tell, government was not helping enough in alleviating the plight of these people," she says.

The experiences gnawed at her conscience and with her idealism intact, Yuvienco entered the Ateneo de Manila University College of Law. "When I entered law school, my perspective was to dedicate my services to the cause of the oppressed," she says.

"I did enjoy law school," Yuvienco continues. "It was liberating for me coming from an all-girls school. Suddenly, you get exposed to different views and ideas. There was an initial culture shock although even prior to that I’ve tried my best to be exposed to the conditions of Philippine society. Ateneo was a bit conservative already from my standpoint."

Her "standpoint" was a fierce concern for human rights that might be construed as left-of-center. For those who equate leftism with mechanical rage and annoying didacticism, Yuvienco will seem like an enigma. Demure, soft-spoken, and circumspect, she does not wear her liberal convictions on her well-tailored sleeve. Mercifully, opposing opinions do not meet with the "reactionary" censure so customary from the traditional left. In law school, Yuvienco encountered a man who epitomized the ethical ideals she herself advocated.

"Romy Capulong attended this symposium in Ateneo about human rights lawyering. In particular, he discussed the Marcos human rights litigations, which were then pending in Hawaii for the Marcos victims–all 9,539 of them. At that time, Romy together with the main plaintiffs won for the victims an amount of $2.1 billion for the Marcos atrocities like summary executions, illegal detention and torture. I was among the more vocal students asking questions about the Marcos human rights litigation and we seemed to hit it off. Later on, he invited me to work for his law firm, the Public Interest Law Center, which he founded after the 1986 Revolution," she says.

Inexorably, Yuvienco had chosen to become a human rights lawyer. Capulong did not coddle her and she was quickly asked to assist in several prickly cases, among them: Maria Rosa Henson, the first Filipino comfort woman to publicly expose her ordeal; AFP Gen. Raymond Jarque who defected to the National Democratic Front (ndf) on grounds of unjust prosecution and persecution by big landlords; NPA Commanders Leoncio Pitao, Sotero Llamas and Danilo Borjal who were arrested, detained and charged with common crimes; and peasant leaders Rafael Mariano and Rafael Baylosis.

The decision to defend men who espoused the overthrow of the very institutions that permitted the rule (and practice) of law could not have been painless–much reflection was involved to resolve the inherent irony. Empathy provided the solution to her dilemma; casting aside a lifetime’s worth of ingrained political orthodoxy, Yuvienco simply put herself in her clients’ shoes.

"Let’s put it this way. I had some thoughts about it, especially at the very beginning. But you can see the questions they raised about, for instance, Philippine society and some structures that have obscured and even obstructed the rights and development of people. And considering their condition–in certain cases, they had no other option but to go to the hills–then you understand why they have to do these things. The role of us human rights lawyers becomes significant when we try to help in articulating the particular demands of these people."

January 10, 2001; 7:30 PM at the Senate: Former Philippine Stock Exchange President Jose Luis Yulo, with his trademark composure, narrates how two female lawyers coordinated his transfer to a safehouse. The TV camera focuses on the youthful faces of Yuvienco and Chona Dimayuga–it is the first time rapt viewers of the Estrada impeachment trial catch a glimpse of Marie Yuvienco the Private Prosecutor.

Three months earlier, Romeo Capulong together with Ding Tanjuatco, Heherson Alvarez, Sergio Apostol, Boy Herrera and Ramon Gonzalez had met at Starbucks Ortigas to discuss plans to file an impeachment complaint against Joseph Estrada. The group subsequently retired to a nearby (and less public) building owned by Tanjuatco. In the course of the five-hour meeting, Tanjuatco read aloud a faxed message: Rene Saguisag’s response to the group’s invitation to join their legal team. In aberrantly clear terms, the former Senator wrote he had elected instead to go to Malacañang and discuss damage control with the President.

Evidently, the cloak-and-dagger precautions of Capulong and company were unnecessary; word of the impeachment complaint had reached the President himself. The GMA 7 news team camped outside their building’s entrance further disabused them of the notion that their secret remained intact.

The Public Interest Law Center (pilc) was divided into two groups–Yuvienco (with Chona Dimayuga, Pam Yabut and Marichu Lambino) belonged to the group under current Justice Secretary Hernando Perez that would handle the 3rd Article of the Impeachment complaint, Betrayal of Public Trust (the BW scandal, in particular). "If you look through the records of the impeachment process, we were supposed to present our case in sequence but it didn’t happen that way," she recalls. "We presented ahead of Article 2. But we were ready."

Ready as they were, it became apparent that overbearing egos and plain stubbornness had resulted in a flawed Articles of Impeachment. "I agree that it was ill-prepared and rushed. It would not have been that way had the parties been open about it. You know, there were certain dynamics that were taking place–we had to conform to that rather than not having anything at all," she says, philosophical about the realities of political conceit.

The defective Articles of Impeachment did not demoralize the prosecution. They insisted that the battle would also be fought in the hearts and minds of the people, not just within the uncharted legal merits of the case. Fueled by coffee, Lipovitan and a sense of history, Yuvienco and colleagues went to work. It soon became obvious, however, that their hard work was being sabotaged from within.

One public prosecutor relentlessly contested the composition of a key witness’s upcoming questioning. His intransigence bewildered the Betrayal of Public Trust team–the public prosecutor’s extensive trial experience should have led him to acknowledge the prepared questions as plainly reasonable. A first clue was provided by information supplied by a prominent anti-Estrada senator, who told the team that one of its members had been "compromised". The team’s suspicions increased when, during the trial itself, the public prosecutor deviated from the agreed list of questions, dumbfounding his witness, whose pleading eyes scoured the courtroom for help.

Yuvienco also had to contend with threats made against the prosecution’s witnesses, chief among them Edgardo Espiritu. Shortly after Yuvienco managed to obtain the hesitant Espiritu’s signed affidavit (she had brought along her notarial seal for good measure), the former Finance Secretary was besieged by phone calls to his home, by then reinforced by two bodyguards outside the door.

Yuvienco relates that a high-ranking Palace official was one of the callers who attempted to dissuade Espiritu from testifying, going as far as to subtly raise the specter of his son’s controversial involvement with Wincorp. Espiritu, though, had a few cards up his sleeve. He was sure that one of the Senate’s most vitriolic members would not contest his statements: "Napautangan kasi namin ‘yan, eh." Moreover, he had firsthand knowledge that one of the defense lawyers was the PNB chairman at the time the bank approved a P600-million loan to an under-capitalized BW Resources (the prosecution’s young lawyers were over-ruled by their seniors on this matter, leaving this ignominy unexplored). As predicted, the silence of the senator and the absence of the defense lawyer during the trial were striking.

But Espiritu took the intense pressure seriously–his next stop after his testimony was the airport. On the same day, he left for the US.

The prosecution team was clearly being tailed, as evinced by the alacrity with which the phone calls were made to Espiritu a mere day after his meeting with Yuvienco. They took the appropriate measures: cellphone SIM cards were regularly replaced, combat driving was studied, maps were readied to determine alternative routes and coded messages were routinely used.

There were moments of farce as well. Yuvienco and Yabut needed to collate the previous public statements of the voluble Jun Yasay for the unenviable task of ensuring he would not contradict himself–it eventually filled an entire CD-Rom. Another time, Yuvienco agreed to meet a supportive top pagcor official. For discretion’s sake, the then obscure Beluga Restaurant along Reposo Street in Makati was selected as the venue. The choice seemed inspired, as the two were the only diners at the establishment–until then PNP Chief Panfilo Lacson walked in with a companion and sat two tables away. The horrified pagcor official stiffened as the color deserted his face. He fumbled for his reading glasses, thinking it would disguise his features. The sensible Yuvienco told him not to bother.

The "second envelope" fiasco came as no surprise to Yuvienco–she harbored no illusions about how the Estrada senators would vote. "We strongly pushed the congressmen to walk out with us but they wanted to preserve the integrity of the process. The walk-out, as far as we were concerned, was a revolutionary act. It spelled the shift from an entirely legal process into something where the people took the option of removing Estrada in a more decisive way."

Funnily enough, Yuvienco was so busy working on motions for subpoena duces tecum, she realized the walk-out had transpired only after a cursory glance at the TV monitor in her Senate workspace revealed her colleagues were gone.

A year later, Yuvienco reflects on the country’s first impeachment trial: "It was sad to note that in the impeachment process, the Senators were voting along party lines. The good part was that we were able to remove an incompetent, corrupt and inept president. I believe that in the final analysis, if we were allowed to present our case to its logical conclusion, the Senators would have voted the same way. The people still would have revolted."

Besides currently handling the Belle Resources plunder case (Estrada is charged with influencing the SSS and GSIS presidents to invest government funds in Belle Resources, allowing him to obtain profit commissions to the tune of P189.7 million), Yuvienco is also involved with the Government-NDF peace negotiations. Negotiations are proceeding at a snail’s pace along a road of salt, and she admits to a certain amount of frustration. Certain parties, she says, still believe in the concept of a military solution.

"The framework of our client, the NDF, is to use the peace negotiations as a venue to resolve the root causes of the armed conflict and thereafter achieve a just and lasting peace. Insofar as the government is concerned, what I’ve witnessed since 1992 during the Ramos administration is that the peace negotiations have been used as a venue for capitulation and surrender, without need for addressing the root causes. It would be difficult to achieve peace if there is no meeting of the minds. I think the objective of government should not just be to let the NPA lay down their arms."

Lest people think human rights lawyers suffer from a terminal lack of humor, Yuvienco shares her favorite lawyer joke: What do you call a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start.

The problem, as Yuvienco sees it, is not a surplus of lawyers but a scarcity of conscientious ones. "When you pass the Bar, you have an oath and this has sadly not been taken to heart by a lot of lawyers. Lawyers I know have contributed to a certain extent to dissension and probably even to problems of society. But you also realize that lawyers have performed vital roles in Philippine society and politics. Therefore, the potential for lawyers to assist in Philippine development goes beyond my imagination. This potential has not been exploited."

Less than one percent of lawyers in the Philippines are practicing human rights lawyers. For so many of the rest, the most frightening words in their profession are pro bono. "He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides," said a distrustful Charles Lamb. For a long list of clients who desperately needed the protective mantle of the law, Marie Yuvienco has fortunately chosen just one side–theirs.