Fold the EJK circus, focus on lawmaking

PARDON our skepticism, but we doubt that something constructive will come out of the opposing demolition jobs in the Congress disguised as legislative inquiries into ExtraJudicial Killings (EJKs) in the administration’s anti-narcotics campaign.

If the accusers in the hearings in the Senate and the House of Representatives have sufficient evidence, they should just file the information before the office of the Prosecutor or the Ombudsman and let the justice system take over.

We cannot afford to waste limited time and resources in trials by publicity. Lawmakers should attend to their basic job of enacting laws, and stop pretending to be sleuths, fiscals, judges or showbiz personalities.

The priority picture is so clear and simple that even boneheads littering the legislature should be able to see it.

It seems that the sea change that supposedly swept the land after the June 30 inauguration of President Rodrigo Duterte has not reached many senators and congressmen who are still playing by the rules of traditional politics of the bad old days.

Like in the previous Senate’s yellow ribbon committee hounding opposition leaders, Sen. Leila de Lima used last Monday a public inquiry to press her unfinished demolition job on Duterte. Her takeoff was alleged EJKs in his anti-narcotics campaign.

Star witness Edgar Matobato, a confessed hitman carried over from De Lima’s heyday as then justice secretary, portrayed Duterte as the boss of the death squads killing assorted criminals and drug suspects when he was Davao City mayor.

To protect the integrity of Senate inquiries, the chamber voted 16-4 that same day to replace De Lima with Sen. Richard Gordon as chair of the committee on justice and human rights.

• House-DoJ hearing targets De Lima

THE NEXT day, the House of Representatives opened its own inquiry into the same narcotics problem, with roles reversed, this time with De Lima the tormentor of Duterte in the political crosshairs.

The House inquiry, alas, was no different from past hearings where partisan and pro-Palace bias ran through the proceedings conducted in Tagalog and broken Inglis. (If the Speaker cared about the chamber’s dim image, he should not have allowed TV coverage.)

Also, the Speaker should not have allowed Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre – of the Executive department – to take over the legislative inquiry, including the presentation and examination of the witnesses after providing them board, lodging, protection and free coaching.

The favorite subject of the witnesses, some of them shady characters who have been cleansed and herded to the House by the justice secretary, is clearly De Lima.

Not that we believe in the innocence of the senadora, but she is being given a reason to cry selective prosecution/persecution – the same complaint against her when she was riding high as justice secretary in the previous administration.

With De Lima no longer chair of the Senate hearing committee, will the inquiry be pursued under Gordon? Will Matobato be left to the not-so-tender mercies of the “Punisher”? Will her ouster scare other witnesses from spilling the beans on Duterte?

Our unsolicited advice is to stop the two-chamber zarzuela and for the Congress to attend instead to urgent legislation. Anyway, if there are valid EJK complaints, the human rights violations will surely come out sooner or later, like water rampaging from a breached dam.

• Duterte starts to bend with the wind?

PRESIDENT Duterte, meanwhile, appears to be shifting to a rebalancing mode, then attempting to repair the damage inflicted on Fil-American relations by his sometimes intemperate statements about the United States and its officials.

Is the President beginning to feel what we said in our Postscript last Sunday as “some gustiness in the political wind blowing from across the Pacific”?

“As the gale intensifies,” we asked, “would he bend gently with the wind like the bamboo or resist rigidly and break?”

“In the eye of the brewing storm are ignored expressions of concern for human rights violations, a perceived veering away from treaty alliances, and sheer diplomatic rudeness,” we noted.

The President and his foreign secretary, who was in the US days ago on a diplomatic errand, have been explaining that he did not seek the pullout of American forces operating in the Philippines under existing executive agreements.

In a speech days ago before the Army’s 10th Infantry Division, the Commander-in-Chief explained: “I said there will be some time in the future that I will ask the US special forces to get out, almost 117 of them, better that you get out so that I can talk peace… and so I can show that you are not there. I never said get out of the Philippines. For after all, we need them in (South) China Sea.”

Last Sept. 12, he also clarified that he just wanted GIs in Mindanao out of harm’s way as some Moros might target them. He then repeated in Bulacan that he wanted Americans out of Mindanao so the government would have “space” for peace talks with Muslim rebels.

Duterte admitted that the Philippines does not have the materiel to fight a war with China if current territorial disputes would lead to hostilities with the neighbor.

“As far as I am concerned, I am against it, because it will just be a massacre,” he said. This could be one of the reasons why he does not want relations with the US, a treaty ally, to deteriorate.

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