Bar exams offers way for activist to fight for rights, justice
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—As the 2023 Bar exams ended on Sunday (Sept. 24), thousands of law graduates, their closest relatives and friends, celebrated hard work through the salubong.
One of them was Jose Mari Callueng, who was tightly embraced by his loved ones as he stepped out of the University of Santo Tomas campus in Manila, one of the 14 local testing centers for this year.
Like the rest of more than 10,000 examinees, Callueng, 28, will wait until December for the release by the Supreme Court of results of what is considered as one of the toughest licensure exams in the country.
READ: 2023 Bar exam results likely out by early December – SC justice
According to SC data, out of the 10,404 law graduates who took the Bar exams on the first day—Sept. 17–10,392 came back on Sept. 20, while 10,387 completed it on the third day, Sept. 24.
GRAPHIC: Ed Lustan
Callueng said taking the exams was not only about his dream of becoming a lawyer, but his commitment, too, to fight for himself and all activists against government harassment.
GOOD WORK. Jose Mari Callueng receives a warm embrace from his loved ones after the last day of the 2023 Bar examinations. | PHOTO: Courtesy of Ryle Lustina
An activist for nine years now, Callueng, while working hard to finish his law degree at the Adamson University, had been leading protest actions against abuses and rights violations.
He served as national president of the College Editors’ Guild of the Philippines, member of the national council of human rights group Karapatan, and paralegal officer of the National Union of People’s Lawyers.
RELATED STORY: 10,816 aspiring lawyers gear up for 2023 Bar exam
But his activism put a crosshair on Callueng, opening him up to attacks that included a case against him and nine other rights defenders in 2019 by then national security adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr.
‘Harassed, threatened’
The charge was the latest in a string of acts of intimidation directed at Callueng, who told INQUIRER.net that since he became an activist, he had received death threats with one particularly scary episode—he found his apartment door forcibly opened one day.
Esperon had filed a perjury case after Karapatan, Gabriela, and Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) filed petitions for Writs of Amparo and Habeas Data at the Supreme Court to seek legal protection from threats and violence.
Karapatan had said the charge is based on “contorted allegations used to harass them,” explaining that Esperon’s complaint involved an accusation that RMP committed a crime because of an alleged false statement in its Securities and Exchange Commission registration.
“RMP has shown that it did not make a willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood, unlike what Esperon would want to maliciously insinuate,” Karapatan pointed out, saying that the complaint “does not hold water.”
RELATED STORY: UN rapporteur seeks junking of perjury raps vs rights advocates
Only Sr. Elenita Belardo, RGS, was initially charged by the prosecutor, but Esperon filed an appeal, which was eventually granted. The case against all of them, including Callueng, was revived.
Karapatan had said Esperon did nothing but try to prove that government critics, even rights defenders, “indeed face reprisals from the government for their line of work, either through State violence or through the weaponization of the law.”
Last Jan. 9, the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 139 acquitted “on the ground of reasonable doubt” the respondents in the case filed by Esperon, saying that the prosecution failed to present enough evidence to warrant a conviction.
READ: QC court acquits rights group members in Esperon’s perjury case
But again, Esperon and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict filed on March 2 a petition seeking to review the decision that dismissed the charge against the 10 activists.
Resisting
Callueng said the case filed against them “creates a chilling effect on those who want to fight for people’s civil and political rights,” saying that “it sends signals out there that if you will resist oppression, you may face retaliation from the government.”
He said they were charged after seeking protection from the SC amid the string of killings of activists in 2018 and 2019: “We are the ones in need of protection from threats to our lives, liberties, and security, but the government instead filed a case against us,” said Callueng.
“The law should operate to protect us, not further oppress us,” he said, stressing that should he pass the Bar exams, he will tirelessly work to promote justice. “It is not only for us who are facing the retaliatory suit, but for all victims of government intimidation,” he said.
RELATED STORY: Rights fighters pass the Bar, stand firm on justice amid rising attacks
“We should not be silenced in our fight for accountability,” he said.
Back in 2018, the United Nations said rights defenders all over the world, including in the Philippines, face “an alarming and shameful level of harsh reprisals and intimidation” from their own governments.
The Philippine government had denied this, however.
Braver than ever
Despite the charge, which was described by activists as “fabricated and baseless,” Callueng did not cower in fear, and instead made it an inspiration to finish his degree and eventually become a lawyer.
READ: Justice Hernando tells Bar exam takers: Remember your ‘why’
GRAPHIC: Ed Lustan
According to data from Karapatan, from July 2022 to June 2023, or within the first year of the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., it has already recorded millions of cases of violations of civil and political rights.
There are already 1.58 million victims of threat/harassment/intimidation; 80 victims of extrajudicial killings; 8 victims of enforced disappearance; 11 victims of torture; 191 victims of illegal arrest without detention; and 78 victims of illegal arrest and detention.
“For a rights defender like me, to reach and finish the Bar exams exhibits the commitment of activists to become better so that we can serve better. I mean, you cannot give what you do not have, right?” Callueng said.
He added: “I was not even meant to go to law school […] but when the chance came, and then my dad said I should go and become a lawyer in order to give more help, I took the shot and made it to the Bar exams.”
GRAPHIC: Ed Lustan
“When I pass the Bar exam, I hope I can work on ensuring that there is greater access to justice. After all, that’s a lawyer’s responsibility,” he said, stressing that so many people are still unaware of their rights.
“I’ve always hoped to translate the language of the law to the language of the masses,” said Callueng.
“The way our laws are stated is very elitist that ordinary people can no longer understand them. As a result, most of them do not know what they are entitled to under the law,” he said.
According to 2018 data from the World Justice Project, only 20 percent of Filipinos were able to access legal help, leaving 80 percent without legal assistance.
