Estelito “Titong” Mendoza’s “greatness” is intricately entwined with the sordid legal practice during martial law, when the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government were under the thumb of Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr., who exercised interdepartmental functions by his lonesome.
True, the Upsilonian Titong got his law degree at UP and his masteral at Harvard (he got both degrees ahead of the ageless Sigma Rhoan Juan Ponce Enrile, whose Ll.M was conferred by Yale) but both lawyers were nurtured in the crucible of US law, hopefully not in the tradition of Chief Justice Roger Taney of the despised Dredd Scott decision that declared Blacks and Whites were equal, but “separate,” ushering in Jim Crow laws and institutionalizing discrimination in the Deep South. The law may be harsh but that is the law, the Latin maxim says.
In the case of Titong, a fraternity brother of Marcos Sr., the law is in his attache case, to the discomfiture of fellow Upsilon brother and lawyer, the late great Joker Arroyo. Battling Titong in a Marcos court is a losing cause, opposition lawyers argued, since Titong‘s valise contains all the presidential decrees he needs. Jojo Binay and Rene Saguisag knew that for a fact. Marcos edicts were the law, an extension of the autocrat’s “la loi, c’est moi” (I am the law) and “l’etat c’est moi” (I am the state) of Louis XIV, said to be apocryphal, but nevertheless illustrative of the absolutism or monarchs and fascists. Put in another way, Titong might also have loved the saying “freedom of the press ends where my nose begins.” No one argues with Titong, who was, during the martial law dispensation, more equal that others in the legal profession, and whose service to Marcos spanned more than 30 years, starting during the time when Marcos Sr. was preparing to unseat Diosdado Macapagal Sr. with a little help from his friend Enrile.
Titong passed away on Mar. 26 at the age of 95, ending seven decades of tumultuous practice as practicing lawyer, then as solicitor general, justice secretary and the ever-reliable counsel to all the Marcoses, all the presidents that succeeded Marcos Sr save for the mother-and-son tandem of Cory Aquino and son Noynoy. Under his stewardship, the Marcos martial law regime won all its cases, a tremendous triumph for martial law justice and the real owner of justice and much of Philippine wealth—Marcos Sr. Under his tutelage, hundreds of judges were appointed to the bench, with many of them rising from their sinecures at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) to the Court of Appeals (CA) and then on to the Supreme Court (SC.)
Many of those who owe their success in the judiciary to Mendoza have lionized him, and some of those he had helped in securing their freedom naturally rued his demise. Enrile got out of detention through Mendoza’s argument for “humanitarian bail” as if age diminishes the likelihood of conviction while the Marcoses and their cohorts escaped conviction in wealth cases due to the failure of the prosecution to determine the main plunderer. The facts may all lead to conviction but determining who led whom became a cardinal issue, throwing into the sewers the simple idea that the act of one is the act of all.
Marcos Jr. also escaped disqualification from his presidential run after Mendoza argued that four successive failures to pay his income taxes were not contumacious acts of a recidivist. The acquittals of Sens. Bong Revilla and Jinggoy Revilla were also credited to Titong. Yet, both of them were told to return the money pocketed by their underlings but it is already 2025 and there are no receipts that show the amounts were paid back. Mendoza also won the P365-million PCSO plunder case against former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, taking the case to the SC and arguing that the evidence didn’t prove that Arroyo was the main plunderer, making her an extra in the dirty episode. The majesty of the law succumbed and deemed to be a mere engineering problem—there is always a remedy, a solution—or else the entire structure crumbles.
Given the fact that feudal debt of gratitude has been inscribed into the gray matter of both bar and bench, many would sing paeans to Titong while others may feel relief since they will no longer be sent letters by Mendoza in his usual attempt to revive cases, or even reverse decisions unfavorable to his clients, including taipans and big corporations. This is troubling Titong legacy that died with him and henceforth, no judge or justice appointed to his or her post upon the lawyer’s behest would feel obliged to acquiesce to his fervent pleas. While even a dog suffering from mange must have his day in court, it is not the duty of the bench to succumb to pressure, as former SC Chief Justice and now Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin knows full well, or to twist a judgment already rendered and even pay no heed to the entry of judgment.
With Titong now in eternal sleep, will his friends now venture to write about his distinguished legal career, why he left for the US after the Marcoses were kicked only to return and resume his practice? Perhaps they can enlighten the Filipino people about the demons he had to battle with, the moral and ethical issues he had to confront within the Marcos dictatorship and outside of it, and the stirring, unanswered question that on a scale of 1 to 100, Titong always represented the oppressors and not the oppressed. In the end, Titong fell prey to the nagging question that faces lawyers: Why protect those who have too much of law and prosecute those who have so little of justice?
