Philippines: Elevate Mass-Murder Complaint to Hague Court, Duterte Dares Foes

Felipe Villamor
2017.05.16
Manila
170516-PH-impeachment-620.jpg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks to reporters shortly after arriving in Davao from a visit to China, May 16, 2017.
AFP

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte dared his political foes Tuesday to take their complaint of mass murder in his war on drugs to the International Criminal Court, a day after the congress threw out an impeachment bid against him.

Speaking to reporters after arriving from a regional conference in China, Duterte said his critics were “being taken for a ride a thousand times over” if they believed he had ordered the systematic killings of thousands of addicts and pushers since becoming president nearly 11 months ago.

He said former justice secretary Leila de Lima, who serves as a senator, and both chambers of congress had investigated his links to death squads, but had proven nothing.

De Lima, a former human rights commissioner, has been jailed over what she described as trumped up charges that she took money from incarcerated drug traffickers to fund her electoral campaign last year.

“What do they want?” Duterte asked. “But it’s true that there are those who died. What kind of a drug war is that if no one dies? But it is not in the character and kind that I was being accused of. That is a joke.”

He dared House member Gary Alejano to make true his threat to take the case before the International Criminal Court in the Hague after the Congressional Justice Committee threw out the complaint on Monday.

“Yeah, he can go ahead. He is free to do it. This is a democracy,” Duterte said.

The 292-member House of Representatives, controlled by Duterte’s allies, threw out the impeachment complaint, calling it insufficient in substance. This effectively gives the maverick 72-year-old leader enough time to consolidate support from allies because congress is allowed to tackle only one impeachment case within a year.

The dismissal earned criticism including from members of the House minority, who accused Duterte’s allies of railroading the impeachment.

Duterte’s top legal adviser, Salvador Panelo, on Tuesday stressed that Alejano’s impeachment case was doomed from the start “because the allegations there are based on hearsay.”

“Apart from that, the others are outright falsities. That will surely never pass scrutiny,” he said. “My advice to Congressman Alejano is he should plant trees in his province to protect the environment instead of creating a course of lies against the president.”

Alejano’s complaints were based on testimony from two former “death squad” members who accused Duterte of knowingly ordering the killings. Both filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court and Alejano and his legal team have said they are considering joining the case.

‘Requiem for due process’

Duterte has owned up to some of the allegations. He told reporters last year on live television that he had personally killed “about three” people.

He has also vowed to protect police involved in his drug war from prosecution, saying he would pardon and release them if they were caught.

Since Duterte assumed the presidency in late June 2016, police have shot and killed nearly 2,700 people during anti-narcotics raids. In addition, about 5,700 drug related deaths were being investigated by police, including a growing number of those blamed on vigilantes who often have cardboard signs owning up to the killings.

Opposition Rep. Edcel Lagman accused his fellow House members of partisanship and of “blind adherence to the dictates” of the ruling party.

With Duterte allies in control of the House, he said the “ascendancy of reason and arguments” was not allowed in Monday’s hearing.

“The summary and precipitate dismissal of Rep. Gary Alejano’s impeachment complaint signaled the requiem for due process, judiciousness and fairness and incanted an alleluia to inordinate partisan importuning,” he said in a statement.

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