Lawyer lawfare

This week’s shocker: Tony La Viña’s decision to come out swinging in favor of Senator Loren Legarda and her son, Representative Leandro Leviste.

The missing political duo, whereabouts still unknown, have caught the ire of citizens. Investigations into alleged corruption and influence-peddling are ongoing, and in the midst of one of the most important chapters in our political history (the ongoing impeachment proceedings versus Vice President Sara Duterte), Senator Legarda simply upped and left.

Meanwhile, let’s not forget the son, who in his tender twenties, was somehow able to dazzle grizzled politicians into granting him his very own national franchise. Yes, he impressed them so much and, yes, he was so fantastically superior to all the other savvy businessmen chasing energy deals, that they all voted he should be given a special law.

Let’s not forget that this son has also been accused of participating in a honey trap, a.k.a. human trafficking, by planning to sic some seductive sirens unto another government official (conveniently, political rivals in their home turf.)

So, we have these unpleasant facts as our backdrop. Cue La Viña, a respected legal scholar and educator, certainly with a career and track record so illustrious it would be silly of me to even try to pry. Full disclosure, an acquaintance from Law school, and one whom I favorably endorsed when he gunned for the deanship of the College of Law. And yet, despite my own personal respect and high regard for him, I’m afraid I have to open my mouth.

The discomfort arises from many things, but foremost is that La Viña seems to have conflated his role as a spokesperson and counsel for the pair with that of a product endorser. Like, he was a movie actor assuring the public that this watch is timeless, and that chicken cube is the best ingredient for sinigang.

He asks us to believe they are innocent because he believes they are innocent. They are innocent because he has studied the matter, because he has consulted with his family, because he has prayed to the gods, and after reading all the documents he has read, he has come to the conclusion that they are innocent. And so, we must believe him.

Why the need to vouch? Why stake his personal integrity? He can just take the job and perform his duties as counsel and spokesman without having to put his own beliefs into the mix.

Setting that aside, Prof. La Viña has also grounded his position on untenable assumptions. He says the senator does not own or operate Solar Para sa Bayan, the solar company of her son, and neither is she a stockholder or an officer. But those facts do not establish innocence when the accusation is influence-peddling or worse, influence-showering, soaking, and luxuriating. The employment of her considerable influence to benefit her son, regardless of the positions she does not hold in his company, would be enough.

Prof. La Viña also protests that Solar Para sa Bayan was no monopoly, that it is not an exclusive franchise. I remember reviewing position papers against the bill when it was being deliberated in Congress. The consistent chorus was that after the success of the EPIRA law, which broke up the monopoly of the National Power Corp., and divided the energy industry into the identifiable segments of distribution, transmission, and generation, Leandro’s bill would suddenly combine all those segments in one company. A company that was nationwide in scope, that would allow him to enter other franchise areas, and should it choose to, perform all those functions. Isn’t a franchise by definition a monopoly?

Prof. La Viña’s harks on Senator Legarda’s very consistent support for the environment as basis for her innocence. All fluff. She may have been the most committed environmentalist on the planet and greener than the greenest tree hugger, but that will not eliminate the possibility that she, in all her maternal glory, acted out of familial love and duty for her son.

So is this lawfare against mother and child, as La Viña insists? Is this merely political persecution? I’m willing to accept the possibility of both --yes, they’re being persecuted, and yes, they’re still guilty as hell.