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Last Monday, National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) director-general Alex Paul Monteagudo insinuated it would be “insane” to resume peace talks with the Left, claiming it would surely fail as it did in the past. The four presidential aspirants, he reportedly said, were just trying to “gain votes” by appearing to be statesmen.
In this regard, Marcos Jr. is no different from Duterte, Pilgrims for Peace noted. They called on peace advocates to “exert all efforts to prevent a return to power of the Marcoses.”
Back to the World Bank, the multilateral lending institution surmised that with the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the pandemic would likely continue to disrupt economic activity in the near term. Besides this prospect, it warned that the notable slowing down in major economies – including the United States and China, the two largest – would adversely affect external demand (exports) in emerging and developing economies.
Practically all the petitioners and their lawyers who have spoken up welcomed these two rulings. However, they found these inadequate, arguing that other provisions that would similarly curtail civil and political rights should be declared unconstitutional as well.
“The ugly head of tyranny, lies and deceit has raised itself in the most difficult of times as we find ourselves in a pandemic of massive disinformation and historical distortion never seen before in Philippine political history.” Historical distortion, he stressed, “must be confronted with historical truth. Historical wrongs should be rectified by justice in the Bangsamoro as well as in the rest of the country.”
Looking at all these, one can surmise the rise of probable national security risk should a militarily powerful country deemed as enemy by the US opt to make a preemptive attack on the US facilities inside Philippine bases (a prospect which President Duterte has said he dreads). And with American soldiers practically being present year-round, the old social ills entailed by their previous presence, such as the prostituting of women near the bases, are likely to worsen.
Duterte said they were members of a drug ring operating not only in the Philippines but in the whole of Southeast Asia. He identified one of them as Youhua Xu, who he said is “one of the biggest shabu importers in the Philippines. He was a member of a transnational drug trafficking organization.”
“Extrajudicial confessions are universally recognized as admissible in evidence against an accused provided they are voluntarily made and corroborated by evidence of the actual commission of the crime.”
She formally requested for authority to her office to begin investigating Duterte’s war on drugs for possible crimes against humanity involving murder. She proposed to include in the investigation the pattern of drug-related EJKs observed in Davao City during Duterte’s tenure as mayor from Nov. 1, 2011 to 2016, noting that in that period, the Philippines had already ratified the Rome Statute of 2002, a treaty establishing the ICC.
Its economy struck like ours by the global pandemic, the government of Colombia, in South America, proposed a law increasing taxes. The people opposed it with a general strike, launched on April 28, impelling the government to withdraw the bill and the finance minister to resign.
It shows an utter lack of rigor in the exercise of his duties as commander-in-chief, for instance, to vet intelligence information. It also indicates how lightly, if at all, he regards his oath of office to “faithfully and conscientiously fulfill my duties as President of the Philippines, preserve and defend its Constitution, execute its laws, do justice to every man and consecrate myself to the service of the Nation.”
Among several others, the National Union of People’s Lawyers and the human rights watchdog Karapatan – which both have been red-tagged and whose members have become EJK victims – have welcomed the Supreme Court’s response, the Senate resolution and Drilon’s filing of the anti-redtagging bill.
Amid the national outrage and international concern raised over the March 7 “Bloody Sunday” killing of nine activists in the Southern Tagalog region, urgent calls are being addressed to the Supreme Court to do what it can, while it can, to protect the people’s constitutional rights.
The Calabarzon killings were actually the latest of the killings that have provoked such condemnation. Still unresolved are the killings of nine Tumandok indigenous community members in similar police operations in Panay Island last Dec. 30, the attempted slaying of the Tumandoks’ lawyer in Iloilo, as well as the killing by police anti-drug operatives of the mayor of Calbayog City.
Criticized for its muddled, bumbling response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Duterte government has been trying to rev up its two priority wars – against insurgency and against illegal drugs – in the remaining 14 months of its term.
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