THE Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) has no stand yet on the proposal to arm judges and lawyers in the face of violence and threats against some of them.

Lawyer Feleciano Bautista, national executive vice president of the IBP, said they are carefully studying the proposal yet.

Offhand, Bautista said that there are already many firearms around and arming other people might confound the many violence happening in country.

Bautista was once a two-termer municipal mayor in his native Sta. Barbara. He also served as provincial administrator when Oscar Orbos was governor of Pangasinan.

He said the most recent lawyer killed in Pangasinan last November 19 was Atty. Froiland Siobal, 57, who was gunned down in his car with his wife, Erlinda, 59, in broad daylight in barangay Inerangan, Alaminos as they were going home to barangay San Miguel, Bani.

Unfortunately, the four suspects in the slaying of Siobal and his wife include a member of the 106th Police Mobile Group and a barangay councilman.

Other members of the Bar and Bench killed sometime ago included Bautista’s own friend and former officemate, Regional Trial Court Judge Oscar Uson, Pasay City RTC Jude Estrellita Paas and another lawyer from Balungao.

In most violence and threats against judges and lawyers, it is the cases that they are handling that were the usual causes and seldom on personal grudges, Bautista said.

“Possibly those who would be allowed to carry firearms are judges and lawyers in very sensitive areas of the country,” he said.

Bautista admitted that the IBP continues to be flooded by resolutions from provincial chapters endorsing the proposal for arming of judges and lawyers. (PNA)