Top legal experts in the country, as well as deans of different colleges of law, asked fellow lawyers and the public to elect human rights lawyer Jose Manuel 'Chel' Diokno to the Senate, espousing his respect for basic human rights and qualities that will uplift the Filipinos’ plight.
“Today, on Human Rights Day, Lawyers for Chel Diokno for Senator 2022 call on our fellow lawyers and all Filipinos to stand up and fight— for justice, for good laws that have at their heart the protection of the rights of all Filipinos, and for candidates with the ability, wisdom, courage, and conscience to make such laws,” the group’s statement read on Friday, Dec. 10.
“We ask that you help make a better Philippine Senate and a better Philippines by supporting and voting for Chel Diokno as Senator in 2022,” it added.
The statement stressed the need to choose lawmakers who know the laws and has the experience in crafting said laws.
“May obligasyon tayong bumoto—at may karapatan tayong magkaroon—ng mga senador na matalino, walang kahina-hinalang mga agenda o bahid ng korapsyon, at ‘yung may malalim at mahusay na pagiisip upang makapagbalangkas ng mga programa at patakaran (We have an obligation to vote—and we have the right to have—senators who are intelligent, with no hidden agenda and streak of corruption, and someone with deep and capable thinking to craft programs and rules),” the group said.
The Lawyers for Chel added it believed Diokno, who is running for the Senate for the second time since the 2019 midterm elections, has these qualities, describing him as a “seasoned lawyer and law professor” who “has fearlessly spoken truth to power, being among the first to condemn the EJKs that have been unleashed under the guise of a war on drugs.”
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During the program for the group’s launching, former Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio endorsed Diokno because the Filipinos “need a guardian in the Senate, will defend, preserve, and protect the civil and political rights.”
He said the human rights defender was one of the first lawyers to question the controversial Anti-Terror Law and his goal is to protect the fundamental rights of the Filipinos as enshrined in the Constitution.
Carpio talked about Diokno’s mission to defend the Filipinos right to freedom of expression and the press, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, and freedom of assembly and of association.
Another prominent lawyer, former Supreme Court Associate Justice Jose Vitug also pushed for Diokno’s inclusion in the Senate, saying that he has personally asked for his views in different matters in the past.
“He's a highly respected colleague in the legal profession as well as in the academe. Quite importantly to me is that, while he has not joined the judiciary for one reason or another, he's held in high esteem by many magistrates who would occasionally ask for his views on certain issues,” he said.
Vitug added that Diokno’s “heart is in the right place” because he has always been concerned about the welfare of the less fortunate.
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“It would be, I think, a privilege and honor for us to be able to have him there along with those who have done so well not only now but in the past,” the former high magistrate said.
Retired Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales also expressed her support for Diokno, who she said “is fiercely and relentlessly committed to the rule of law” on behalf of ordinary Filipinos “who have found themselves at the receiving end of overreaching state power.”
“At no other time in our nationhood than now do we more urgently need senators who know how our laws have failed the people and how these laws and the legal community may be reformed so that they finally become true handmaidens to justice,” she said.
Diokno, the founding dean of the De La Salle University College of Law, rendered public service in a variety of roles, including lawyering for the families of the victims of the MV Dona Paz tragedy in the late 1980s.
He is also the chairperson of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), a nationwide organization of human rights lawyers founded in 1974 by luminaries the late Senators Lorenzo Tanada and Joker Arroyo, and Diokno’s father, Jose “Pepe” Diokno.
The convenors of Lawyers for Chel include deans of the Colleges of Law in Manila and provinces, senior partners of prominent law firms, professors, chief legal counsels, and former justices of the Supreme Court.