Integrated Bar members to join SONA protesters on Monday

The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) said on Wednesday it will not keep silent as congressmen try to force a Senate-less constituent assembly and “trample the Constitution,” and will make its protest known during President Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address on July 27.

In a forum held in Pasig City Wednesday, former IBP president Anselmo Cruz said that some 1,000 members are expected to join sectoral groups in a march and rally on Monday to show their opposition to the moves to amend the Constitution through a constituent assembly.

“This present Congress that we have is so confident of trying to push an unconstitutional constituent assembly by the house operating by itself, in the absence of Senate, in a bicameral system of presidential form of government,” Cruz said.

“This House of Representative thinks that our people are silent and Congress will have its way so that is why we lawyers are deciding to mount a march and a rally together with other progressive  forces to show that we will not stand idly by,” he added.

The House passed Resolution 1109, which seeks to convene Congress into a constituent assembly to amend the 1987 Constitution, and allegedly to allow Arroyo to stay in power beyond 2010.

“So I call upon you, my fellow lawyers and law students, to show Congress and this government that not every Filipino will keep silent and not every Filipino will stand idle by as they trample the Constitution,” he added.

Cruz said the march will start by 1 p.m. in front of the office of the Commission on Human Rights in Commonwealth Avenue, Quezon City. He said that this protest will be similar to what the IBP did in 2006, when President Arroyo declared a state of emergency through Proclamation 1017.

“I call on you now to show again that we are not silent, that we can stand in righteous indignation and anger, that this move to bring congress into a constituent assembly by its own self, to change the Constitution to a parliamentary form of government, to perpetuate Gloria Arroyo in power must stop,” Cruz said.

“Let us show Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court that if this case goes to the Supreme Court  this case  not be resolved by mere numbers  alone but on the merits of the case,” he added.

Aside from the rally in 2006, the IBP slammed the Arroyo government’s “culture of corruption” in December 2007, during the height of the scandal on cash gifts distributed to government officials in Malacanang. In February last year, the group asked Arroyo to form an independent citizen’s body similar to the Melo Commission to investigate the botched national broadband deal with the China’s ZTE-Corp. (Newsbreak)

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