General Admission
For Cudia: From soldier to lawyer
By Al S. Mendoza
A friend of mine has flubbed the bar exams for the second straight time.
But that does not diminish the luster of his character.
Lawyer or not, what counts is a man’s substance.
A good person will always be a good person.
That’s my friend yesterday. He is that today. He will be that tomorrow. Forever, I believe.
A total of 1,174 out of 5,292 hopefuls have passed the 2013 bar exams as announced last March 18.
That means 4,118 did not make it.
That means a passing average of 22.28 percent.
That means it is not that easy to become a lawyer.
But do you know that it would have been a lower passing average had the Supreme Court not upgraded the passing grade from 75 to 73?
Compassion, if not pity, also ruled the last bar exams.
As one Supreme Court justice has said, “If the passing grade was 75, only 694 bar-takers would have made it.”
That would have been an all-time low of 13.13 percent and could have made us the laughingstock of the world?
The justice did not explain the upgrading.
Thus, will some high schools follow suit to make 73 instead of 75 as the passing grade, too, in their graduation exercises this year?
They might be justified if they did so, considering that the Supreme Court had set a precedent.
And, maybe to make it more interesting for this year’s harvest of graduates, let Aldrin Jeff Cudia, the dismissed PMA first class cadet, graduate without honors (salutatorian, Presidential Navy Saber award, etc.), thereby transforming a sad story into a happy ending?
Cudia lied?
Who hasn’t lied? Some politicians lie all the time.
Honor Code?
Whom did Cudia dishonor? The PMA?
Did not Victor Corpuz raid the PMA armory and steal high-powered weapons while still being a cadet there and next, he joined the New People’s Army?
If that wasn’t dishonoring, what is?
Yet, years later, Corpuz would find himself with an upgraded military rank and installed in a high post in the government.
And Cudia was being expelled for a lie that wasn’t really exactly a lie because one of his 9 peers that “tried” him a la kangaroo court found him innocent?
In their latest move to get justice for their son, Cudia’s parents had asked the Supreme Court to overturn the decision dismissing the cadet and order the PMA to give him his diploma.
“Just the diploma, please,” said Cudia’s father, Renato. “And next, he will quit the military altogether.”
The young Cudia has said it so himself: Leave the military and study law.
At 22 years old—and with a brilliant mind to boot by virtue of finishing No. 2 in his class, a ranking unceremoniously stripped off him—Cudia might yet pass the bar with plenty to spare before he could turn 30.
Certainly, it is not the end of the world. Look at Corpuz.
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