Cong. Tony Cuenco: The Fight against Terror (sponsorship speech on the Anti-Terrorism Bill, delivered on November 29, 2005) - Part 5

Cuenco, a seasoned legislator, authored the passage of numerous laws in the country among them: the Local Government Code (partnered in the Senate by his classmate and ally, Senator Pimentel), the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, and the Philippine Baseline Law. He also sponsored the passage of the country’s first anti-terror law then called as the Human Security Act of 2007. He championed its passage parrying opposition by his peers in Congress. CEBUpedia is reproducing his sponsorship, as even up to now it answers the questions of the critics of the new law, The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020:

(Continued from previous part)

There are good and bad Muslims just as they are good and bad Christians. If we shall be fighting the Muslim terrorists with everything that we’ve got, it is because we would be doing the same thing to Christian terrorists.

 This Bill is to protect the good, and to fight the bad, whether they be Christians or Muslims, indigenous or expatriate, young or old, north or south, highlanders or senators, not only once but twice! –or as many as it takes.

May I also remind this Chamber that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has written Speaker Joe de Venecia less than a month ago, the following-document, and I QUOTE:

Dear Speaker De Venecia, I hereby certify to the necessity of the immediate enactment of House Bill No. 4839, entitled: AN ACT DEFINING TERRORISM, ESTABLISHING INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISIMS TO PREVENT AND SUPRESS ITS COMMISSION, PROVIDING PENALTIES THEREFOR AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES, to address the public emergency, heightened by the recent bombing in the region and other parts of the world, consisting in the need to stamp out terrorism and its attendant activities by putting in place the necessary legal framework for the speedy prosecution of the perpetrators, UNQUOTE.

In passing, Mr. Speaker, if there is terrorism in our country today, it is because it thrives under the conditions we have in our environment. Part of this is the legal environment where the terrorists use legalities as protection.

If these terrorists were crocodiles, one good thing that we can do in fighting them is to drain away the swamp. We should deprive them of their legal cover.

Terrorists have special weapons. They engage in psychological warfare. They turn to cyber terrorism. Their most powerful weapon, which is being used to great advantage in Iraq today, is suicide bombing. We must fight tem at every step and every turn in every way.

In conclusion, let me say that never in the history of the world has mankind faced such nerve-wracking, blood-curdling, spine-tingling, bone-chilling, mind-boggling, backbreaking threat of a united international terrorism, whose visage is staring at us in the eye.

We have no choice but confront this challenge with all that we can command, with all that we have and all that we can do all that we are.

For this is a fight for survival, a battle to the death, blow-for-blow, round-for-round, mettle-to-mettle, eyeball-to-eyeball, toe-to-toe, tibay sa tibay.

This is also a battle for human rights, for the right of every citizen to live peacefully in freedom from fear, freedom from violence, freedom from sudden viciousness of a terrorist attack. That is what this Bill is all about, and that is what we seek in the character and conscience, the vision and the mission and the patriotism, of the honorable Members of this august Chamber. Mr. Speaker, I thank you very much.” (End of series)