Christmas is barely six months away, and someone is already preparing a list of who the naughty guys in town are. And he’s not even Santa Claus. And the fear is that, even nice guys can potentially get into the list, notwithstanding assurances by the list maker that it wouldn’t be so.
Hermogenes Esperon, the country’s national security adviser, is preparing the list pronto after President Duterte signed into law the anti-terror bill that met with strong opposition from various sectors of Philippine society, not just opposition politicians and activists, but businessmen, professionals, and the religious.
Of course, the man who certified it as urgent was the same man who made it into law, the man blamed for massive human rights violation in the country on account of the so-called war on drugs that, today, has to net the big fish yet. Waylaid , thus far, were thousands of small fries, some of whom had met their end in the hands of police using the oft-used or abused defense of “nanlaban”.
As per Esperon, first on the list will be those already named by the United Nations as terrorists or terrorists groups. Ironically, it’s the same U.N. which has called out the Duterte Administration for coming up with such a law . Or, to put it another way , the U.N. hasn’t exactly humored Duterte for his latest achievement. Not to mention earlier decisions to investigate abuses commited in the so-called war on drugs.
The senators who pushed for the law and, of course, lauded Duterte for indulging them, hailed a very timely and historic act. How that is, time and history will tell, and it what terms and at what cost.
If you believe other national leaders who are equallly, if not more, trustworthy, they say it ain’t so. How can it be very timely and historic when many Filipinos are already chafing under the draconian measures and other effects of COVID 19?
As of this writing, the number of cases have ballooned to over 44,000 and projected to reach between 65,000 to 90,000 at the end of August? The new law really puts in question the administration’s sense of priority.
Who will land on Esperon’s list first is anybody’s guess. The English poet Alexander Pope warned against being the first by whom the new is tried. But that may not require the brain of a rocket scientist. Where contrarians are considered enemies, not just heretics, those with buck teeth and protruding jaws are among the endangered species.
You may credit those who favor the anti-terror law for sincerity and zealousness in looking after the safety of the republic against terroristic acts, but you can also make them accountable for removing the very Constitutional safeguards to basic human rights. As a former American jurist warned , the greatest danger to liberty lurks in insidious encroac hment of men of zeal, well meaning but lack understanding.
He urged people to be most on guard in protecting liberty when government purposes are beneficent.
In the present conversation,the operative word is the Constitution or every clear and badly written provision in the anti-terror law that trashes it.
I like what the dean of the school of government at Ateneo had said in connection with the knee-jerk defense that some vital provisions of the law were copied from strong democracies like the United States and Australia.
If the shoe fits, why not wear it? But does it? The logical presumption, the dean noted, is that the instutions tasked to enforce the anti-terror law here are of the same integrity and of the same commitment to the rule of law as those in those two countries.
Actually, that’s what causes fear, not the law itself: the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines are not exactly squeaky clean when the rule law is brought to the fore. Two recent examples: the shooting of soldiers in Sulu by policemen and the shooting of another soldier, a mentally ill, by another policeman of then President Marcos.
How the crafters of the antiterror law missed this flagrant record is either a case of convenient naivete or extreme optimism. In any case, it’s not hard to see where these leaders are coming from by stacking them against the likes of former Supreme Court justices Antonio Carpio and Vicente Mendoza, Vice President Leni Robredo and Sen. Kiko Pangilinan.
There is no doubt that the latter are dyed-in-wool democrats and libertarians and unwavering supporters of the rule of law. The former are proven advocate of the law of rule.
What stands now between the spectre of human rights abuse for freedom-loving Filipinos and their rescue from monstrous shadow of the anti-terror law is the Supreme Court. That’s where the ultimate hope lies in the face of potential harm, written and unwritten, real and imagined
Even then, there’s reason to be still hopeful that the High Tribunal will tilt against the windmill of power, it’s our best bet. Hope lies eternal in the human breast, so it was penned by another libertarian of long time past.
