ATTY. Evangeline Tadlas Carrasco, my beloved and only wife, shocked me and my family a few weeks back. She told us she has decided to run in the coming elections! It seems she consulted no one, not even our children. And she’s running as an independent. She is gutsy.
We can only be supportive of her intention to serve the public through getting elected into public office. After all, she has been successful in law practice and she now wants to serve by being in the legislature. She’s been the active partner in our law office and has been doing very well.
In college, she was a working student with the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Then after college, she worked with the COA or Commission on Audit, assigned to audit revenue collectors in different towns and cities, then as audit Examiner with the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation. She took up law at Xavier University while working as government audit examiner, and finished her law course in just four years. Right after our wedding and while honeymooning, we both reviewed for the bar exams and passed simultaneously.
I put up my own law office immediately, alone, while she stayed for a while with PCIC, and later joined the Public Attorney’s Office. For quite sometime now, she’s been the active partner in our private law office at Pabayo cor. Cruz Tall Sts., while I would assist her in some big cases that need to be analyzed more. Our two daughters are lawyers, too, and one is married to another lawyer, Atty. Al-an Genoso, an XU product from Lapasan—and so we now have five partner-lawyers or consultants in our firm. Our youngest child is now taking up law, and he helps us a lot in our legal research. Our other son is a medical doctor from UST and presently working with his girlfriend doctor at the Chinese General Hospital in Manila. Our eldest daughter is an industrial engineer presently working in Cebu and blessed with two lovely children and a husband working in Philhealth.
Vangie has been very effective as a law practitioner. Among her notable achievements are: 1) the successful prosecution of the Writ of Kalikasan petition against the mining companies responsible for the destruction of the Iponan river. Her services were obtained by pro-environmental groups Sulog and Bangon Cagayan and she succeeded in convincing the three Court of Appeals justices to issue the writ commanding the mining companies to desist from destroying the river. She was opposed by about 20 other lawyers; 2) successfully assisting hundreds of nursing students from Liceo and COC who were disallowed from graduating; 3) successful defense of three associations from Patag whose houses were about to be demolished; 4) successful defense of the San Miguel Village residents at Lapasan whose road has been expropriated by the City Government after it was excavated illegally; 5) her successful defense of several urban poor groups whose lands have finally been acquired by the actual occupants through the National Home Mortgage or purchased directly from the landowners; 6) her successful defense of the CARP or agrarian beneficiaries in Upper Puerto who were finally given their titles by the Department of Agrarian Reform or DAR. At one time, Vangie was the secretary-general of the women’s group, Gabriela.
Without money and a political party, and knowing how dirty politics is in this country, it will be a real tough challenge for her. And I and my children, and the people who support her, can only wish her well in this political or electoral endeavor.
(Mariano Carrasco is a lawyer based in Cagayan de Oro.)
