Robin Padilla set the indulgent tone of the Senate investigation into former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. But first, he indulged himself; he claimed to bring to the proceedings a singular expertise — an expertise in “the underworld” acquired during his three years’ imprisonment for illegal arms possession.
What he did not mention is the all-too-relevant fact that he owes Duterte bigtime — that it was Duterte who granted him absolute pardon, thus restoring to him his civil and political rights and allowing him to run for the Senate as an ex-convict and be elected on nothing other than popularity with moviegoers. To be fair, at the end of the hearing day, Padilla did walk up to Duterte to express his fawning adoration of him, genuflecting before him as he took his hand and put it to his brow.
In any case, whenever I caught Padilla on television, nearly always at Senate hearings, he was sitting idly by, if he was not eating heartily, on taxpayer account. But this time, not only did he seem satiated, he had never been so animated, so vociferous.
After speaking in praise of himself, he praised Rodrigo Roa Duterte and his war. Actor before becoming senator, when he refers to Duterte, he almost always speaks all three names that make the set, careful for some reason not to leave out the middle “Roa” and pronouncing each name so weightily the utterance takes an air of grandiloquence.
The war, Padilla said, brought “quiet to the streets.” I suppose it somehow did; after all, it had killed thousands of street habitués — small fry like drug runners, passers, and users, not to mention victims mistaken for suspects. Still, that could not have brought much quiet if Duterte’s declaration was to be believed that the nation’s druggy population came up to 3 million.
Actually, Duterte’s portrayal of the extent of the drug problem is too convenient to be credible. For one thing, the international count, presumably the more objective one, was only 1.8 million, and, for another, a Social Weather Stations survey showed that Filipinos felt safer — and, I guess, the streets also were quieter, and that’s without anyone dying — during the presidency of Benigno Aquino III, Duterte’s predecessor, than at any other time.
Apparently anxious to get the hearing going and not give the impression of being over-tolerant toward Duterte’s champions among his colleagues, Senator Aquilino Pimentel III, the subcommittee chair, announced he was giving first speaking priority to the victims’ representatives, as only procedurally logical — accusations and misgivings before defense. But Ronald de la Rosa, Duterte’s national police chief before becoming senator, was quick to object, out of “respect to a former president” and “for humanitarian reasons,” given his age (79).
Precisely the wrong reasons to cite for Duterte. Respect is earned; it is given in admiration for one’s abilities or achievements. Surely, nothing about a trigger-happy president is worthy of admiration, and nothing about his brutal and indiscriminate national campaign of summary killings inspires humanitarianism. Still, De la Rosa prevailed: Duterte should speak first.
But just as well. Duterte was all over the place and made scarce sense, something not really surprising, knowing his aberration — antisocial narcissistic personality disorder. In fact, that aberration was on extravagant display at the hearing, complete with the repetitiveness, the self-absorption, the dismissive gestures, the swearing, the smirking, the glaring, the teeth-gritting, the full complement of crazy. There was much of the same when he came on again, after his accusers had had their turn to speak.
Yet, he seemed to have found himself a good crowd, judging by the smiles and some outright laughter he got on such a grievous occasion. The crowd recalled the herds that had applauded his obscene public appearances during his presidency.
But De la Rosa, though smiling along, could not have found him funny at all. In fact, not seldom did he scramble to grab the floor and, although turning out to be not very sensible himself, try to ensure, for both their sakes, that Duterte was taken in a safe context. That was particularly noticeable after Duterte had not only admitted he did have his own death squad but pointed out its members among those present, De la Rosa included.
De la Rosa seemed only too relieved when Pimentel suggested everyone retire for the day. He walked up to Duterte to persuade him to go home. But, apparently feeling on a roll, Duterte was reluctant to go and continued for some moments yet to speak to his muted microphone. He liked the senators and the senators liked him back — apart, of course, from Risa Hontiveros, who called him out if only to remind him to be civil at least. I would not be surprised, though, if she herself felt in her own way rewarded as Duterte gathered the rope with which to hang himself and declared that it was his war, it was his assassins, it was his kills.
That must have done it for the International Criminal Court, where Duterte and De la Rosa face charges of “crimes against humanity” for their war. That one-day spectacle at the Senate provided, apart from what constitutes a confession from Duterte, indications of the general inability of Philippine institutions to deal with him without any feelings of favorable bias, the precise reason the court is intervening.
As it is, investigators for the international court, according to Philippine sources close to them, have done their in-country interviews of witnesses to Duterte’s war and other informants. Moreover, they say, three confessed assassins for Duterte are now in The Hague, the court’s headquarters, being prepared presumably for taking the stand against him. The more familiar are Arturo Lascañas and Edgar Matobato, who had come forward early in Duterte’s presidential term and been kept in hiding, out of reach by Duterte’s reprisals. The identity of the third, an apparent later addition, is being kept secret for now.
Apparently, notwithstanding President Marcos’s oft-repeated position to not allow such outside intervention in Philippine judicial affairs, the International Criminal Court has been able to move far along into its process, indeed so far along that the sources expect warrants to be issued soon. – Rappler.com