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BY HERBERT VEGO
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The Fajardo son has gone a long way
THE ballroom of Hotel del Rio was full of VIPs when I peeped by Saturday morning. There was going to be regional convention of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) Western Visayas. I could see a man in black suit standing out – Atty. Abdiel Dan Elijah “Ade” S. Fajardo, the incumbent IBP national executive vice president and concurrently governor for Western Visayas. By rule of succession, in 2017 he will succeed the incumbent IBP president, Atty. Rosario Setias-Reyes.
We at Panay News share the joy of Ade’s proud parents, Danny Fajardo and the former Maria Santillan – the founders of this paper – as they recall the meteoric rise of their son in the legal firmament.
Within the second quarter of year 2015, Ade won three coveted positions at the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), the association of Philippine lawyers all over the country – first as president of IBP, Antique chapter; next as Western Visayas governor; and finally as executive vice president for a term of two years. He and the other officers were inducted into office by Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno on July 1, 2015.
Fajardo – a law graduate of the University of the Philippines who was admitted to the bar in 1998 – had run and won on the platform of providing legal assistance to the less fortunate who could not afford adequate legal representation in the courts of law; and of looking after the welfare of lawyers, especially those in need of emergency assistance, as in medical and funeral expenses.
Slowly but surely, the present IBP leadership has “depoliticized” the legal profession, shunning the influence of elected public officials in the appointment of prosecutors and judges.
Whenever I see Ade Fajardo, the supposedly forgetful 66-year-old “me” always remembers the first time I saw him sometime in 1973 or 42 long years ago when he was only a baby, in a bus running from San Jose, Antique to Iloilo City. He was in the arms of his father, whom I had not yet personally known at that time, who was seated beside a familiar lady. The lady was his wife, the former Maria Santillan, my classmate from Grade 5 to first-year-college.
It was not until eight years later in 1981 when I saw the grown-up boy again, playing with his younger brother “Uwa” at the hilly Fajardo residence in San Jose. I had arrived from Manila to discuss with Danny and Mary how I could help in nursing their latest “infant” – the newspaper Panay News, which was then a fledgling weekly. The editor at that time, Mary’s elder sister Vicky S. Primero (now deceased), could not edit full time due to her teaching job.
Panay News has grown, and so has Ade, who holds the record of being the first lawyer from Antique to have reached national stature at the IBP.
While Mayor Jed Mabilog was welcoming the delegates to the IBP convention, the older Danny Fajardo enthused that he himself had wished to be a lawyer but his parents had no financial means to send him to a law school. No regrets, he said; his wish has come true through his eldest son.
The younger Fajardo was still a UP-Law student when he first worked at the office of the late senator Blas Fajardo Ople.
After passing the bar, he joined the law office of a fellow Antiqueño, Atty. Ronald “Pope” Solis.
In 2012, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III appointed Ade Fajardo chief of the legal department of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).
In 2014, he resigned that government position to return to active law practice, counting as his clients the Philippine Airlines (PAL) and other airplane companies.
Atty. Abdiel Dan S. Fajardo is happily married to Lulu, a nurse, by whom he has two kids, Bart and Darna. Both are now in college./PN
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