Rockstar lawyer Carlo Ybañez laments: “Because of Duterte, wrong became right.
“Before the Dutertes came into your life, wasn’t right from wrong clear to you? You knew it was wrong to murder. Wrong to insult women. Wrong to mock God. Wrong to break the law. Wrong to threaten. Wrong to side with foreign interest against your country’s.
“These were obvious to you before. But what happened when the Dutertes entered? Gradually you came to justify that wrong can become right. Killing became valid, so long as addicts. Degrading women became acceptable, if by a president’s joke. Permissible to call God stupid.
“Unthinkable how you justify it to yourself. But they became right to you anyway. Lawbreaking became OK because the rights to due process, to privacy, to travel don’t matter. Same with threatening to slaughter. Or giving up our territory to others because we can’t defend it.
“Your metamorphosis didn’t end there. What were wrong before, you came to admire as virtues. One who murders is brave. One who dishonors women is macho. One who blasphemes is honest. One who violates laws is clever. One who allies with the enemy is practical.
“Look at yourself in the mirror. That’s the person you’ve become. When Duterte came into your life, you threw principles into the waste bin. Right or wrong?”
Last week a congressman manifested those flaws. He rationalized VP Sara Duterte’s livestreamed threat to assassinate Bongbong Marcos, Liza Araneta and Martin Romualdez. Supposedly VP Sara was not plotting but merely expressing a wish, so no basis to impeach her.
He exemplified himself. Purportedly upon seeing in person actress Anne Curtis, he entertained earthly desires. “But of course those were only imaginings, and no one would sue me for my imagination.”
Fellow-congressmen had his crass utterances stricken off the record. Female colleagues cautioned him against breaching parliamentary ethics. Mayor Joy Belmonte had to remind him that he was majority leader when the Quezon City Council ordained against degrading women. The House of Reps holds sessions in QC.
Next day, the lawyer-spokesman of Rodrigo Duterte’s PDP-Laban joined the fray. He taunted Ms. Curtis’ sister Jasmine for wanting to be desired by posting selfies in bikinis. He boasted that he once desired Gabriela Rep. Sarah Elago after he caught a whiff of her scent during a hearing. So sue me, he dared.
That afternoon a pro-Duterte senator asked a foreign female athlete during formal hearings if she has any Filipino boyfriend. He then pointed to a married colleague as eligible.
To recall, the senator who heads PDP-Laban denigrated the law against marital rape because “men have the right to sexual satisfaction.”
The four can’t keep locker room talk inside the locker room. Thus, they break laws on safe spaces.
Their “Tatay Digong” has infected them. While campaigning for president in 2016, he said he should have been first in line as mayor when Davao City prisoners gangraped and slew a nun.
In his first press con as president, he wolf-whistled at a female reporter who raised her hand for a question. Several times thereafter, he told soldiers that he’d defend them in court if they raped, but only up to three times. He exhorted them to shoot female rebels in the genitals.
On his first Christmas as president, he mocked the Eucharist, “Body of Christ sa inyong igit (in your sh*t).” Often he derided the God of Christians, Muslims and Jews for “being stupid to let the serpent tempt Adam and Eve.”
Professing love for President Xi Jinping, he begged him to make the Philippines a province of China. He called “gago” voters who believed his campaign promise to jet-ski to the Spratlys to plant the Philippine flag and declare to China that “this is ours.” Today two senators parrot Duterte’s kowtow.
Worst was Duterte’s bloody war on drugs that killed 7,000 on official record. Thirty thousand if including vigilante slayings.
At the International Criminal Court on Feb. 23, lawyer Joel Butuyan denounced the virus of impunity that Duterte spread across the Philippines. It infected Filipinos to the point that they could no longer discern right from wrong, evil from good.
Journalist-human rights advocate Carlos Conde knows very well what Butuyan meant as common legal representative for the drug war victims. For decades Conde had reported Davao City police murders of druggies. Also of tortures and kidnappings of suspected rebels elsewhere. He survived harassment and attempts at violent silencing, and so was able to sit at the ICC gallery that day.
On the way back to hotel Conde watched a group of Duterte supporters chanting the name of their idol who is indicted for crimes against humanity. That night he wrote about the need to “dedutertefy” the Philippines the way postwar Germany denazified itself.
“The ICC process is necessary but not sufficient,” Conde stated. “What the Philippines needs is a genuine moral reckoning – in schools, in media, in families, in politics. We need to look honestly at the culture of impunity that made Duterte not just possible but popular. We need to stop treating his supporters’ feelings as more important than his victims’ lives.
“Dedutertefication won’t be easy. It won’t be comfortable. But it is the only path back to a country worth believing in.”