The Commission on Human Rights will be investigating the deaths of rogue police officer Ryan Quiamco and his wife in an alleged shootout with police during a buy-bust operation. The CHR was apparently spurred into action by observations that Quiamco, who was on President Duterte's list of high value illegal drug suspects, may have been the victim of a rubout.
The CHR, of course, does not need to be prodded by anyone, nor spurred by anything, to conduct an investigation in pursuit of its mandate. And that mandate is far-ranging. It covers the entire gamut of human rights violations. Maybe it is the relentlessness of the government's aggressive war on illegal drugs. Or maybe it is something else. But the perception is that the CHR appears too focused on victims of this drug war.
Again, there is no question about that because, as had already been said, the CHR relies on no one and nothing on what cases to pursue. If it chooses to focus exclusively on victims of the government's anti-drug war, then so be it. It is just that, with so many victims in this drug war, almost all of whom are being claimed to be victims of human rights violations as well, it becomes almost impossible for the CHR to do a good job of everything.
The wisdom of the saying "do not bite more than you can chew" is impossible to ignore and lose in these circumstances. It is common knowledge that the CHR does not have the manpower and the budget to pursue every case it wants with the dedication and diligence each case deserves and still come up with a result or finding that is credible enough to be accepted by everybody.
What is plausibly foreseeable is the CHR will come up with resolutions that fall miserably short of acceptable standards on credibility. This is particularly true in a situation where the CHR may feel obliged to step in for no other reason than that it cannot refuse a plea for recognition, and never mind that no criminal ever owns up to a crime but is always a victim of something or another.
What poses as a potentially huge problem for the CHR, if not now then somewhere down the road, is that it is investing too heavily with its own credibility on cases that many people would rather assign to regularity in the performance of duties by law enforcers. The drug problem is a problem that no person should approach with a mind that gives too much benefit of the doubt to drug suspects and too little faith in the capacity of our law enforcers to do their jobs well.