Ampatuan lawyer: New disbarment case against me won't prosper

A lawyer of the Ampatuan clan on Saturday expressed confidence the disbarment case lodged against him for allegedly helping the clan patriarch evade arrest in connection with the Maguindanao massacre last year will not prosper. Having dodged at least seven disbarment cases in the past, Philip Pantojan told GMANews.TV in an interview he was no longer bothered by the new disbarment complaint against him and fellow lawyer Rances Sayadi, former solicitor general of t he Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). "I think this will be dismissed. I'm used to this. Actually, I already lost count of the disbarment cases filed against me. It's between seven and nine, I think, and they were all dismissed," he said. But it does not mean Pantojan, an Ampatuan lawyer for around 10 years, would take the case lightly, saying he still considered it a "very serious one." "What the prosecution is doing is that they want to throw me into the sidelines," Pantojan said. The complainants – 11 families of victims of the Nov. 23 massacre that killed 57 people – used as basis for their complaint the testimony of prosecution witness and long-time Ampatuan house aide Lakmudin Saliao, in which he claimed Pantojan and Sayadi conspired with the Ampatuans in faking clan patriarch Andal Sr's health condition. Saliao, who claimed he had served the Ampatuans since 1987, said he was with Andal Sr when he, his son Zaldy Ampatuan, their family physician, Pantojan and Sayadi agreed to bring the clan patriarch from the family's mansion in Shariff Aguak to the Davao Doctors Hospital in Davao City to evade arrest. Saliao said he himself pretended (on orders) to be attending to Andal Sr by fixing his oxygen mask whenever they passed a checkpoint toward Davao City. The complainants said "Pantojan and Sayadi participated willfully in conspiracy to cover up the direct participation of the Ampatuan clan patriarch.... All indications point to the fact that respondents not only counseled Andal Sr. to escape prosecution by pretending that he was stricken with a serious illness, but even actively assisted his escape to Davao City." Citing a 1903 ruling of the Supreme Court, the complaints said that while lawyers owe their clients their fidelity, lawyers should not be accessories to the obstruction of justice. But Pantojan insisted Saliao's testimony was a lie. "We have already submitted medical records that will show that the old man did not have a clean bill of health when he left Shariff Aguak," he said. Last July, Andal Sr was rushed from his detention cell at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City to the Armed Forces of the Philippines Medical Center in Quezon City after complaining about his Herpes Zoster or shingles, a viral disease with symptoms of painful skin rash with blisters on one side of the body. A medical report from the hospital showed he has post-herpetic neuralgia, hypertensive cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and his diabetes mellitus – although they were deemed "controlled." I can leave but not due to this one Pantojan said he would not hesitate retiring as a lawyer any day, adding that he was already "happy" to have been in the profession for the last 20 years. But he insisted he will not do so just because of a "baseless" accusation. "Kung magpa-file sila ng disbarment, pumili sila ng mabigat. Eh ito napakagaan at walang basis," he said. He said he would be submitting a comment on the seven-page complaint, filed by the relatives of the victims with assistance from Rommel Bagaras, a lawyer from CenterLaw. This is not the first time Pantojan clashed with the prosecution, which earlier this year asked Judge Solis-Reyes to cite Pantojan in contempt for accusing – during a January 13 press conference in Davao City – prosecution witness Rasul Sangki of lying. He made the accusations on the day the witness testified against Ampatuan Jr. "That's direct contempt," Santos had said of the press conference that was held while the case was still ongoing. The clan patriarch, his sons Andal Jr (former Datu Unsay mayor), Zaldy (former ARMM governor), and Sajid (former officer in charge Maguindao governor), along with around 190 individuals are facing 57 counts of murder. The November 23 bloodbath at Sitio Masalay in Barangay Salaman, Ampatuan is dubbed as the worst election-related violence in Philippine history. Fifty-seven people, including 32 journalists, were killed. — LBG, GMANews.TV