by RORIE R. FAJARDO

OMBUDSMAN SPECIAL Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio has two framed caricatures displayed prominently in his white office at the Sandiganbayan. One shows him locking up former President Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada inside a prison cell and shouting “Next!” The other has him knocking out Estrada in a boxing ring.

“They are both gifts to me,” says Villa-Ignacio, the special prosecutor who leads the team of government lawyers in the P4.1-billion plunder and perjury cases against Estrada.

The drawings reflect what Villa-Ignacio and his team want to happen on Wednesday, when the verdict on Estrada’s cases will be handed down. But if a caricature of Villa-Ignacio’s team and the defense lawyers were to be drawn, it may look like the meeting of several Davids against a number of Goliaths — the latter being members of the defense panel.

Estrada is being represented in court by a powerhouse of lawyers who by record and reputation in the Philippine legal community include the best and most cunning minds in litigation and criminal law. One veteran litigator also describes some of the lawyers in the defense panel as experts in “challenging the limits and the integrity of the rules.”

Among the members of Estrada’s defense team have been former Supreme Court Chief Justice Andres Narvasa, former Supreme Court Associate Justice Serafin Cuevas, former Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza (who was also justice minister during the Marcos regime), former Manila prosecutor Jose Flaminiano, the late Prospero Crescini, brothers Sigfrid and Raymond Fortun, Cleofe Villar-Versola, and former University of the Philippines College of Law Dean Pacifico Agabin. Former senator Rene Saguisag is the defense’s lead counsel.

Villa-Ignacio estimates that about eight to nine top law firms in the country worked together to defend Estrada. That meant that while the Sandiganbayan prosecutors have respectable credentials, they have had to contend with the added stress of not only going after a former president, but also of being pitted against a phalanx of lawyers who collectively have a wider range of court experiences than they have.

As Villa-Ignacio tells it, then Vice President Teofisto Guingona and leaders from civil society and religious groups who participated in the Edsa Dos uprising that culminated in the ouster of Estrada in 2001 asked him to join the prosecution panel a few months into the trial, supposedly to tilt the balance against the defense team.

“The civil society groups thought the defense team might be too much for the regular prosecutors to win the battle,” he says, adding that “too much” may even be an understatement.

THE ONE WHO STAYED
Guingona was one of the senator-judges at Estrada’s impeachment trial at the Senate. He was also the one who gave the powerful “I Accuse” speech that compelled the Blue Ribbon Committee to investigate then Ilocos Sur Governor Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson’s allegations that Estrada had enriched himself through jueteng pay-offs and misuse of the tobacco fund.

The irony is that while Villa-Ignacio remains with the prosecution, Guingona is now an Estrada supporter. Guingona had a falling-out with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in July 2002; he then resigned as foreign secretary following his opposition to Arroyo’s policy favoring U.S. military presence in southern Philippines. In the 2004 polls, he campaigned for the opposition and has since stayed firmly on the opposition’s side.

In the meantime, Villa-Ignacio has been adding more years to his public service career. The special prosecutor enjoys a good reputation in legal circles, but up until he began appearing for the people in the Estrada trial, Villa-Ignacio was not well-known — at least not among the general public. Now 65 years old, he has spent more than half his life in public service: as a prosecutor of the Department of Justice, as a military trial court lawyer, and later as presiding judge at Makati’s regional trial courts.

Among the more famous cases Villa-Ignacio has participated in as public prosecutor were that of the Maureen Hultman-Ronald Chapman murders in 1991, in which the accused was Claudio Teehankee Jr., son of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Claudio Teehankee.

Villa-Ignacio also helped in presenting prosecution evidence against San Idelfonso, Bulacan Mayor Honorato Galvez, in connection with the killing of brothers Alvin and Miguel Vinculado in November 1993, and in the rebellion cases against then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and then Army Colonel Gregorio Honasan during the term of President Corazon Aquino.

But by the time Villa-Ignacio was invited to join the prosecution team in the Estrada case, he was already retired and quite content in being a faculty member of the Ateneo College of Law and an instructor for a review class at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM). Having been a public servant for so long, he obviously also knew that the remuneration he would get would not be much — a pittance, in fact, compared to the six- up to nine-digit sums several of Estrada’s lawyers usually ask for in exchange for their services.

But Guingona proved persuasive. Villa-Ignacio recalls what the then vice president told him: “This is for the good of the country. Think of the fact that you would be involved in a very historic trial of the century. Not all lawyers would have a chance to be involved in such a significant case.”