MANILA, Philippines — Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque’s bid to sit as part of the International Law Commission is facing growing opposition in the Philippines, with the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers being the latest to voice their objection.
In a statement on Tuesday, the NUPL said that Roque was a known Filipino public interest lawyer who has since became a “legal chameleon who uses legalspeak to spin reality and reinterprets many established legal notions and principles to suit official political narratives.”
Related Stories
While the NUPL recognized that while Roque may have “academic and professional ‘bragging rights,’ he is morally underserving to be part of this august international legal organ.”
The lawyers’ group stressed: “Competence is meaningful only with consistency, integrity and credibility.”
Roque taught constitutional law and public international law for 15 years at the University of the Philippines – College of Law. He also handled high-profile public interest cases such as standing legal counsel to the family of slain transgender Jennifer Laude.
In 2017, he was appointed as President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesperson and served for a year before stepping down. He was reappointed to the post in April 2020 after attempting to run for public office in 2019, a bid that he later abandoned, citing his health.
Defense of extrajudicial killings
NUPL in its statement also cited Roque’s justification of Duterte’s questionable policies and bizarre pronouncements on the rule of law. They also said Roque has “publicly rationalized extrajudicial killings” in the government’s “war on drugs.”
They added that Roque “enabled political repression including weaponization of the law, scowled against legitimate criticism and dissent, intimidated members of media, berated and insulted health professionals critical of failed pandemic measures, undermined international accountability bodies like the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Council, its mechanisms and treaty bodies, and downplayed or justified many official actions of dubious legal and constitutional validity.”
“With no sense of pleasure, we respectfully dissent as a matter of principle against his hypocritical ambition of a fellow Filipino lawyer to reinvent himself, especially one supported by an administration widely disdained in the international community for its human rights violations and its fluctuating adherence and even regressive positions on vital international law and principles,” the lawyers' group also said.
The NUPL’s opposition comes a day after the Free Legal Assistance Group said it wrote to the ILC to object to the nomination of Roque, who they said, is ill-fitted to join the commission.
Roque confirmed that he flew to New York in connection to his nomination, but dismissed opposition to his bid as “bereft of legal merit” and “gross ignorance of what the ILC is all about.”
With his nomination, Roque stands to get elected by the UN General Assembly to the commission and become one of eight representatives from Asia-Pacific states to sit for five years in the panel beginning Jan. 1, 2023.
According to the ILC's website, members serve in their individual capacity and not as representatives of their governments. It also states that "[m]embers of the Commission are paid travel expenses and receive a special allowance in accordance with article 1348 of the Commission’s statute."