Some 600 police officers will be deployed around the University of Santo Tomas campus in Manila for three Sundays starting today, venue of the bar exams for 8,245 law graduates aspiring to be licensed as lawyers, security authorities said.
At the same time, the Manila Police District released information on roads that would be closed during the three Sundays.
The roads surrounding UST—namely, P. Noval Street, Dapitan Street, A.H. Lacson Avenue, and España Boulevard—will be on stop and go traffic situation from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. onwards on Nov. 3, 10 and 17.
These areas will also be no-parking zones on those dates, police said.
Deployment of the 600 police officers is aimed at security operations, anti-criminality operations, emergency preparedness and crisis response.
In a related development, the Federation of Free Workers, in a statement urged the Supreme Court to reexamine and amend the rules of Court to decentralize the bar exam.
“It is now the ripe time. We need to decentralize the bar exam for the benefit of majority of aspiring lawyers who come from the provinces and ‘have less in life’,” FFW president lawyer Sonny Matula said.
Matula, who came from Agusan del Sur, is a law lecturer in different law schools in Metro Manila.
“Since 1901, the bar exams have been done in Manila,” he said.
The FFW believes the SC needs to study and amend Section 11, Rule 138 (Attorneys and Admission to Bar) of the Rules of the Court, which provides that, “Examinations for admission to the bar of the Philippines shall take place annually in the City of Manila.”
“We need to decongest the bar exams as it is now suffocating and needs to be decentralized to lessen the financial burden and unhealthy tension in the four weeks of November in Manila,” FFW lawyer Michelle Pacubas, who hails from Pangasinan, said.
“When you play at home in sports, you have a home court advantage. I guess I can easily pass the bar if the bar exam center is near where I live,” said FFW vice president for Visayas Amalia Campus, who is planning to take the bar next year.
UP Law graduate Charlo Paredes from Surigao, a friend of the FFW, said: “First, this will help bar takers from the province to lessen the cost of board and lodging, transportation and other expenses.
Second, this will also help reduce the adverse effect on traffic in Metro Manila. Third, this will somehow temper the unnecessary fanfare of the bar exam, which is supposed to be an academic and solemn event. Too many examinees in one place will really cause media attention.”
Paredes added, “too much Bar exam fanfare leads to misplaced glorification of the legal profession.”
With similar sentiments as FFW leaders, Labor Arbiter Randy Pablo of the National Labor Relations Commission in Manila is also in favor of the proposed simultaneous holding of Bar exams in Manila and in regional centers in Visayas and Mindanao.
“This will relieve the provincial examinees from the financial, emotional, and psychological burden of having to take the month-long bar exams away from home,” Pablo said.
“Ultimately, this will encourage would-be lawyers to enroll and finish their law studies, and later engage in law practice in their own regions, thereby reducing the urban concentration of lawyers in Metro Manila,” Pablo added.
