By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
There is a small dusty room in the corner of our house. All the junks were taken out and the table and two chairs were wiped shiny. It is not anymore for junk storage and the cat’s hunting ground for roaches and other tiny creatures. It is now worthy as a classroom for the kids’ distance learning.
The drawback is our weak wi-fi signal. No fiber optic cables in our place being quite far from the city. But on the first two days, somehow the kids managed to get into and participate in their respective classes.
Our messenger who works part time while going to school in the hope of finally getting a degree in forestry from the Benguet State University also related how their internet problem was affecting their learning activities. Their professor would be lecturing to his computer without any face to face feedback. Sometimes his students would text, but apparently not received, to say that he was not coming across clearly. His voice would be choppy or the slides or photos he was trying to show would not be clear. At the end of the hour, he would then say, “OK, let us have a short quiz.” The students then would quickly make use of whatever cellphone load they had to call him that they did not understand anything because of the weak or slow internet signal. Too bad.
The other day I texted that same professor who is a friend of mine. “Let us have coffee this 3:30 pm after my trial at La Trinidad?” His response, “Sorry, brod I have a google class, Next time.” He meant he will lecture again to his students through google. I hoped that it would not again be that bad.
Such is the hell we all have been going through and will continue to suffer from due to the weak or slow internet signal. We practicing lawyers even before the pandemic had been suffering already. We would be presenting in court a witness who might have been in Israel or in the UK or in Hongkong and then what he was saying could not be understood by the judge or by anybody in the courtroom.
About a year ago, I was scheduled to present a witness who was in another Asian country and so me and my staff prepared enough. The popular programs then for video conferencing were Skype or Facebook so we were ready with both. We brought a monitor for the judge, two laptops for our use and that of the adverse counsel. The presentation was going on quite well when the sound suddenly disappeared. We could see the person on the monitor but we could not hear what he was saying in answer to our questions. Since we were on Skype, we switched to Facebook and, thank God, we could again hear him. At least the day was not wasted, particularly considering that we had to travel for more than an hour to get to that court of a nearby province.
Of course there were other platforms we now could use like Zoom, etc., for video conferencing but Philippine courts have to use now Microsoft Teams, as ordered by the Supreme Court. As I heard, the right to use the platform was given for free.
The internet signal problem, however, remains. .
In another case, we could not even hear our witness who was in the Middle East. Good thing the family court judge was very patient to literally put his ear on the monitor everytime the witness answered so she could hear what the witness was saying, and then dictated what she heard to the court stenographer. She did that during the whole duration of the trial. Bless her. It was in the interest of justice. So we successfully got through the day.
Now even if a witness were available or could be personally present in court, the judges would still try to hear him through video conferencing, even if sometimes we could only hear garbled sounds. At least, because of this pandemic, everybody is being cautious and trying to maximize the use of technology. We will end up better equipped for the digital age.
Certainly, there will be casualties, like students who want to learn but could not afford a computer or a smart cellphone. Where is the government in such situations? **
