Unbeknownst

  Unbeknownst to many (i     don’t   usually use  that word it’s better to just say “not known to many” but anyway. I’m talking about a lawyer so, I thought I’d use the word)… unbeknownst to many, while most of us were resting over the weekend, Atty. Neri Colmenares, CODAL spokesperson and Bayan Muna legal counsel, took a flight to Cebu; and from Cebu he probably had to take a cab then a tricycle to a port area, where he took a boat, probably a small boat, to find the small, sleepy, highly militarized town of Hilongos, Leyte, and had to stay there for two or three nights, bearing with him a Motion to observe status quo or a motion to defer the transfer of Satur Ocampo from Manila to Leyte. It was this Motion that he filed that very early Monday morning,  argued before the judge, and which became the basis of the Order of the judge that Satur Ocampo remain at his present detention place. That’s Nery Colmenares. That was his work. No fanfare, no interviews, no press releases, just plain hard work and brilliance, and maybe persuasiveness that morning.     

         Sometimes when three-year-olds ask what the work of a lawyer is, it’s not as easy explaining it as when an engineer or architect or doctor would explain their work: they have something to show for it: they can point at a building and say  “I made that building” etc, or show their stethoscope and medicines. But lawyers… what do you show? Your papers? Words?               

         What Nery did: that’s what it’s all about.  “Justice”, “freedom”, “power” are not just words.                 

        When you’re behind bars, that’s never abstract. When your house is being taken away, that’s never abstract. When your kin is murdered and you don’t know by whom and for what, that’s never abstract.                  

         So, next time a kid asks you what  lawyering means, just point at that picture of Nery: in the sala/ staffroom of the judge; then at the picture of Satur being roughed up. That’s what it’s all about.