A bad movie deserves a bad review. It’s inevitable. Sooner or later, it will get one. Others may wish it never.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is decisive about it. It will give the war-on-drugs of the previous administration a honest-to-goodness review. Many, if not most, expect it will be a bad one. So everyone and his cousin in the present dispensation are desperately trying to stop it, to see to it that a bad review doesn’t happen. So the review has been suspended not once but twice already, reminiscent of a former president being accused of lying in as many times.
If the ICC insists on having one, a push will get a shove, or even worse. President Marcos and his allies have made it clear they’re not cooperating. One even upped the ante: he suggested a possible arrest of the ICC reviewers, a throwback tactic of a bygone administration that is being peddled around as a golden age. One senator infamously shows off by calling the reviewers monkeys. For a while, you thought somebody would jump from the 4th floor of either chambers to drive the point home. A general was said to have asked from what floor the dictator wanted him to jump. .It was apocryphal, but jokes were found effective in an authoritarian regime,
As if on cue, the House and the Senate have filed separate resolutions telling the ICC to forget it.
They’re not welcome. Didn’t they know, them monkeys, that there’s such a thing as sovereignty? Desperate times call for desperate measures. Politics can be as bad as it gets. At this point, the whole idea of opposing a probe of the 6,000 to 30,000 death/murder of people as a collateral to the noble war has become a theatric affair, living up to Marx’ view of history as a tragedy before a farce.
Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban thinks there still hope for Duterte et al and his allies to keep the ICC at bay, It also a graceful way for the Philippines to avoid certain embarrassment before the world. He suggests the creation of a commission, similar to the Agrava Commission that looked into the assassination of former Sen. Ninoy Aquino in an airport that bears his name since which some politicians want to do away with. The commission ruled that it was a military conspiracy, sentenced the guilty who insisted they were innocent but given life imprisonment ,nevertheless. The commission never found out who was the mastermind.
Interestingly, then President Marcos, Sr. blamed the communists for Aquino’s death, a claim echoed by the then First Lady Imelda Marcos when she appeared before the commission. In a gesture to prove they weren’t beholden to anyone, members of commission sang a happy birthday piece to her. A joke made its rounds after the ruling that only five persons in the Philippines didn’t know who was the mastermind behind Ninoy’s assassination.
The Panganiban proposal will be a difficult one for Marcos Jr. If he picks men and women from the non-opposition to form the commission, it will be a self-defeating one. He has made his position clear and final on the case: Duterte is not guilty of the crime against humanity levelled against him. Will the commission oppose him? Cynicism and hypocrisy will control public conversation.
Once during the election of members to the new Batasang Pambansa, the opposition was decimated. So another joke went around about the opposition’s reaction to the wipe out loss to the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) . When the man in Malacanang learned about it, he reportedly laughed it off and said: pinabayaang kunang tumakbo, gusto manalo pa. ( I already let them run, they still wanted to win).
If the president appoints members of the commission from the opposition, assuming they accept it, will the President be ready to accept a contrary ruling and change his mind? Option 1 is possible but not likely. For one thing, the ICC will look with suspicion at such a commission, given the President and his allies’ common position. Option 2 is dicey; truth is a compelling, powerful incentive.
Panganiban gave two caveats vis-a-vis his proposal. Adopting it might as well be sincere. Marcos’ Jr. is currently on a journey to win the good graces of other countries. He can be deceptive at his own peril. On the other hand, there is really a good reason to try his proposal. Allowing the ICC to proceed with its probe may reveal more nasty truth about the war- on -drugs. It can only shame the Philippines before the world.
Panganiban is a distinguished legal mind, not a politician although many lawyers are, and a highly respected public servant. It doesn’t mean he can’t be optimistically naïve. The man he ,obviously, was selling his idea to, believes the a golden age version of martial law, was guilty of not filing his income tax return twice as public official, still ignores the P23 billion or P203 billion estate tax obligation ordered by the Supreme Court, and maintains that withdrawing from the ICC was right because it was doing its job about a human right issue in the country. Not the best customer in town.
Or he wants a good movie be made from a bad script, which many writers believe is impossible to do, let alone be fair . Allowing the ICC to ferret out the truth ,in light of the nightmarish war against drugs during Duterte’s time, is the best legal thing to do. It can shame us but it can also make us better. The holocaust shamed Germany, still does, but it did not stop Germany from rising above it. The truth hurts but it can set people free.
