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“The (WEF) is hosting a Country Strategy Dialogue for us where we are given the opportunity to promote the Philippines as leader and driver of growth and a gateway to the Asia-Pacific region. One that is open for business – ever ready to complement regional and global expansion plans for both foreign and Philippine-based enterprises anchored on the competent and well-educated Filipino workers, the managers and professionals.
The consequences have since been evident in the common belief that there is one law for the rich and powerful and another for the poor and powerless. But the justice system over which DoJ Secretary Remulla now presides could still gain some measure of credibility. Other than merely demonstrating its alleged impartiality in the case of such high-profile cases as its current Secretary’s son, it could also look into actively helping speed up the judicial process.
We, the petitioners and all those who supported our struggle to defend and fight for our sovereign rights to our maritime resources in the West Philippine Sea, express profound appreciation to the Gesmundo court for responding positively to Bayan Muna’s repeated pleas for judicial action.
The inflation rate remains sky-high. Low productivity is putting the country’s food security at risk. Filipino fisherfolk are unable to fish in much of the Philippines’ own waters. Poverty and hunger are devastating millions. Entire regions are flooded and reeling from the onslaught of climate change. The pandemic is still a problem, and the economy yet to recover.
Does Marcos Jr. think the Davos and Japan trips require more of his time and attention than the myriad domestic problems needing urgent actions that his administration faces in the new year?
In effect, Remulla passes the blame for human rights woes on the Left. He sought to assure the UNHRC that the government is determined to end the insurgency through the NTF-ELCAC’s “whole-of-nation strategy.”
Not only the alleged involvement of government officials in it is among the fallouts in the investigation of — and hopefully the prosecution and punishment of those responsible for — the murder of broadcaster and online journalist Percy Lapid (Percival Mabasa). It is also its reminding the public and the rest of the world of one of the best-kept, but nevertheless well-known secrets in this country: the dismal and shameful state of its prisons.
If the “spiral of violence” against journalists does end, or is at least minimized, the dividends would be to free expression, press freedom, and, quite possibly, the return of the enterprise and investigative journalism that this country needs to help it move forward.
Taking note of the government’s “refusal to cooperate with the international human rights mechanisms” and the ongoing investigations of EJKs by the International Criminal Court, the Committee prods the Philippines to put an end to EJKs of suspected drug offenders. It has recommended nine steps toward ending the killings.
Whether the Marcos administration’s response will go beyond mere words is what the independent press, media advocacy groups, journalists’ unions, and free expression defenders and advocates should be monitoring in the coming weeks and months of the Marcos watch.
“Such practices amount to intimidation, discourage engagement with international bodies and prevent HRDs from accessing assistance and remedies available to them through international human rights mechanisms.”
Instead of attacking the COA should it find and report an anomaly in this or that agency, President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. could urge the offending party to do better. In doing so he would be defending the Commission as a Constitutional body crucial to the drive for good government and national development to which every administration, including his and his predecessor’s, claim to be committed.
Two days apart this week, two important commemorations took place. One evoked a resounding plea for long-delayed justice; the other, for the resumption of peace negotiations to attain just and lasting peace. In each case, concerned groups and advocates urged President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to act positively.
Like any coup in the less developed countries of the Third World, a coup in the US, even a “soft” one, would also be solely focused on advancing and defending the interests of its instigators and of the wing of the power elite it installs in power. The rest of the world would hardly matter.
“As Church, we are challenged by our present time and context to stand for truth… The Church will not and cannot be neutral on moral and ethical issues and concerns.”
If indeed the Marcos II administration intends to bring back the past by, among other means, making ROTC mandatory again, 21 years after it was made an NTSP elective, it could start by first instituting the needed reforms in the program to prevent or at least reduce the corruption, abuses and violence that many associate with it.
“Withdrawal from the Rome Statute does not discharge a state party from the obligations it has incurred as a member. Consequently, liability for the alleged summary killings and other atrocities committed in the course of the war on drugs [during the Duterte administration] is not nullified or negated.”
A replication of mindless conformity and blind obedience is in process in the Philippines, where the power elite and its minions regard dissent and the diversity of views necessary in a democracy as a vice rather than virtue. Instead of unity in diversity, what the oligarchy wants is unity in conformity.
In his first Cabinet meeting last Tuesday, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced that economic recovery takes precedence over all concerns under his administration and that his economic managers would set the “central policy.”
Together with, and partly as a result of, its attacks on the press, it is leaving behind it neither change nor development, but more of the same rule of the few, even worse poverty, and, as it kept reminding us, the use of State violence and terror against anyone who dared exercise the freedoms the Constitution protects.
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