The Court’s decision is a clear rebuke of the misuse of counterterrorism laws to suppress activism, journalism, and humanitarian work. It affirms that defending human rights and reporting the truth are not crimes.

The 7th National Congress closed with a collective reaffirmation of NUPL’s founding principles: that the law must serve the people, and that people’s lawyering is both profession and protest, calling and commitment. The NUPL leaves Cebu with renewed strength and unity, ready to carry forward its mission to defend rights, fight for justice, and hold power to account.

The Call of Our Times 

Comrades, friends, and colleagues, we are facing difficult times. The repression is relentless. The threats are palpable and real.

But the call of our times is clear: to continue, to stand firm, and to multiply the ranks of people’s lawyers who will not flinch in the face of fear.

And to mindlessly gloss over that this award was given automatically for mere length of years as a lawyer is to bestow it to even those who make a mockery of the lofty IBP ideals of no master but law, no goal but justice, and no guide but conscience.

History has come full circle, but so has the people’s resistance. On this anniversary of Martial Law, we call on all Filipinos to remember not only the horrors of the past but the dangers of their repetition. Dictatorship thrives when fear silences dissent; democracy lives when people collectively defy state oppression.

The road of people’s lawyering has always been more difficult, precisely because it resists the temptations of privilege. But it is the path most faithful with the Constitution’s promise that public office is a public trust, and with the fundamental principle that accountability is owed to the people.

Today, private complainant Aurora Santiago filed a Motion for Leave to File Motion for Reconsideration and the Motion for Reconsideration itself before the Supreme Court, challenging the acquittal of Marvin Nuguid in the case of the extrajudicial killing (EJK) of Dutch missionary Wilhelmus "Willem" Geertman.

To the brave souls about to enter the halls of bar testing centers, we salute you. The days ahead will be long, but they will also mark the threshold of your becoming officers of the court and, and, more than that, lawyers who must decide whose side of history you will stand on.