THIS IS MY SONA

THIS IS MY SONA

In today's State of the Nation Address (SONA), President P-NOY says that this is not his SONA but the people's.

Then the President's website asks: IKAW, ANO ANG SONA MO?

Singing on my electric guitar as my way out of emotional stresses of cases

Here's my answer:

For the past one year (from the last Monday of July 2012 up to the last Monday of July 2013), my fellow lawyers at our law firm and I have given legally-effective pro bono services to those people who were refused help or cheated by PAO lawyers and from those urban poor people who believe they could get better fight with us.
If only we charged these people properly, we could have easily earned millions of pesos. But we do not do so because the clients can even hardly find for their foods on their family's table. 

What we just require from them is sincerity in their belief and loyalty to their fight: That they should not give up the fight while their lawyers are continuing the fight for justice in this bewildered forest of injustice full of snakes lurking in the Halls of Justice and elsewhere.

In the courses of all the fights we take on, it is indeed disheartening to see judges going out of senses in signing orders, resolutions and decisions. 

We are not saying that they received substance from our opponent's armory of money and influence.  We are only questioning why in seemingly simple questions the answers of these judges and other decision-makers are out of the blue or coming too late when in questions of justice speed is essential?

In some of our fights, while we have no money to fight toe-to-toe against the moneyed and influential, we just used the power of filing complaints before the Supreme Court and Office of the Ombudsman, giving us some impressions from opponents that we are tough guys to lick.  

Thus, we never fear filing complaints against powerful men and women who we genuinely believe committed grave misconduct, gross ignorance of the law, and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service, even if we have other pending cases with the subject judges or decision-makers.

I have experience several times being shouted at by judges who I complained before the Supreme Court for sitting on cases. 

Knowing that I was the one who relayed to the Supreme Court that he sat on more than 20 cases of imprisoned persons waiting for years for the decisions in their respective cases, this judge at the General Santos City RTC shouted at me: "I don't care about the new law!" 

This shout came after the judge rendered judgment on a client whose case was waiting for the decision for almost two years.  That judge sentenced a client to 14 years in maximum but the sentence came after 18 years of actual imprisonment.

Thus, aside from pro bono legal services, we also have gotten insults and shouts from decision-makers.

We just pray to God that He will give us more strength to continue doing what we love to do. We do these things to help the people that God created supposedly equal.

This is my SONA, P-Noy!