Column: Duterte to ICC: I’m beyond accountability

This column on President Duterte’s transparent attempt to evade the grasp of the International Criminal Court was published on March 20, 2018. Yesterday, or a year and nine months later, a new development in the ICC hit the headlines. 

President Duterte’s decision to withdraw the Philippines from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court will not protect him; rather, it has only made him even more vulnerable to a potential criminal case. No amount of hiding behind the flag, or the ostentatious kissing of it, can mask the message his decision sends. He is saying: I do not consider myself accountable.

Column: Enrile is proof of politicized Court

Published on March 13, 2018—which means it has been almost two years since the Duterte administration’s capture of the Supreme Court.

In August 2015, when a majority of Supreme Court justices bent over backwards and sideways and upside down to grant Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s petition for bail in the nonbailable case of plunder, they based their decision on grounds that Enrile did not even raise. The Court made special mention of the veteran politician’s “social and political standing” and the “currently fragile state of Enrile’s health” as fundamental factors.

The decision written by Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin reduced a long list of Enrile’s ailments to four medical conditions which, “singly or collectively,” and in the view of the director of the Philippine General Hospital, “could pose significant risks to the life of Enrile.” This was written when Enrile, then in detention after being charged as a principal coaccused in plunder and graft cases arising out of the Janet Lim Napoles pork barrel scam, was a sprightly 91 years old. We must presume that today, at 94, the same four medical conditions continue to pose a significant risk to Enrile’s life: “uncontrolled hypertension,” arrhythmia, “coronary calcifications associated with coronary artery disease,” and “exacerbations of ACOS,” or Asthma-COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) Overlap Syndrome.

Last Sunday, Rep. Reynaldo Umali, the chair of the House of Representatives’ justice committee who is driving the impeachment charge against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, acknowledged that Enrile could serve as a member of the panel of prosecutors that will seek Sereno’s conviction at the impeachment trial—when, as is widely expected, the House supermajority votes to impeach her and the Senate convenes as an impeachment court.

To Enrile’s high social and political standing, I guess we can add his undisputed status as an extraordinary human specimen.

Column: In defense of CJ Sereno

It pains me to take issue against a writer I esteem, but I felt then—as I feel now, long after a judicial coup removed Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno from the Supreme Court—that taking issue was a matter of duty. Published on March 06, 2018. 

I disagree, strongly, with the much-esteemed Randy David when he suggests in “Conflicting thoughts on CJ Sereno” that the Philippines’ first female chief justice’s candid remarks about her appointment being “God’s will” is the same as a psychologist’s terrible misuse of neuropsychiatric test results.

Column: Political opportunists behind Charter change

Column published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on February 27, 2018.

I have referred before, in columns and in public forums, to the realization that the Duterte administration’s policy on Charter change has changed according to the President’s political fortunes. Over time, it has become more extreme.

On June 30, 2016, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez filed Resolution of Both Houses No. 01, calling for a constitutional convention. On the same day, Rep. Gloria Arroyo filed both House Bill No. 486 and Concurrent House Resolution No. 01 (with Rep. Prospero Pichay Jr.) also calling for a constitutional convention. All three representatives asserted that both the House of Representatives and the Senate must vote separately. Alvarez even argued that “a Constitutional Convention is not only the most participatory and democratic mode by which the discussion of the revision of the Constitution could be initiated but it will also dispel any doubt that it is being sought to advance the political and economic interests of a few.”

Column: Digong has taken over the bus

Playing catch-up with my columns again. This one was published on February 20, 2018. It offers a metaphor for understanding President Duterte’s assaults on press freedom. It also refers to this keynote speech I gave at the 2018 National Schools Press Conference, held in Dumaguete City, where I revisited Rizal’s letter to the women of Malolos—and suggested three new tasks for the campus press.

Some readers, not all of them ill-intentioned, ask a common question: If you can still write whatever you want in your column, or the news sections and the op-ed pages can still run stories or opinion critical of President Duterte, what assault on press freedom are you talking about?

But attacks on press freedom are not a one-time, either-or event, like a car crash. The readers who ask the question think attacking press freedom is like a serious road accident: It happens once, and there’s blood on the street. But in reality, assaults on the free press are like riding a bus headed for, say, Naga (because that’s where Mayon Volcano apparently is), and in the middle of the route a new crew, including a new driver, takes over—and then the bus suddenly, violently, changes direction. Do the passengers need to wait until the bus stops in Imperial Manila or arrives in Paoay, Ilocos Norte, before demanding an explanation or correcting the course?

This metaphor sums up the state of press freedom in the Philippines today: A new driver has taken over the bus and is going the wrong way (he even calls press freedom a mere privilege, instead of a guaranteed right). Do the passengers wait until he loses his brakes or threatens to drive the bus off a cliff before they take action to protect themselves?