To pass the indigency test to qualify for free legal services of the valuable Public Attorney’s Office (PAO), Mary Jane Veloso’s illegal recruiters should have a net monthly income not exceeding P12,000 and must submit their latest income tax returns and certificates of indigency from the Department of Social Welfare and Development and from the barangay.
How come the assigned PAO lawyers could not readily produce these at yesterday’s preliminary hearing when the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers asked that they be “educated” about the factual and legal bases for the rendering of free legal services? Why did the good PAO lawyers, after a public blunder of impetuously reading in a booming voice a document saying they do not know Sergio and Lacanilao and, when cornered, condescendingly tried to turn the tables by requiring the Velosos to prove the wealth of the “indigents” who immigration records show travel frequently to Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore? It’s all part of a grand premeditated scheme of Sergio et al.
And this free legal ride is on top of course of persistent reports that they are privately living it up, have properties in other people’s names and are escorted by armed men when they were lording it over Nueva Ecija before the long though very slow arm of the law caught up with them.
Everyone has the basic right to counsel. But please exercise due diligence, check your priorities where public money goes and lend your good free legal services to the scores who are truly needy and deserving. Just educate us and we will let it slide for now.
But please do not genuflect before the altar of legal technicalities to the point of obstructionism. If you want to fight a good fight, kindly fight it right.
We certainly do not want any peripheral though important issues to delay at all the legal proceedings as Mary Jane does not deserve to be in jail any second longer.
Remember, it was PAO’s clients that practically escorted her to the firing squad.
—EDRE U. OLALIA,
counsel for private complainants
Mary Jane and Veloso family,
and secretary general,
National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, nupl2007@gmail.com