A sheer act of arrogance

LUCERNE, Switzerland -- For a country that purports to be the foremost proponent of democracy, it does not stand to reason why the United States of America has the temerity to intrude into the sovereignty of other democratic countries like the Philippines which is about the longest surviving democracy in Southeast Asia.

 

The irony is sick. The Philippines has a functioning judicial system, a legislative and executive department the functions of which are defined by a constitution. It is, therefore, a classic paradox for US Congress to impose on the Philippine government its wishful order to free a person indicted by the Regional Trial Court and affirmed by the Supreme Court by sheer suspicion that the court ruling is an act of political oppression and retaliatory.

 

The case in point is Sen. Leila de Lima who is accused in Court, not because of her dalliance with high profile inmates who had been convicted and imprisoned in the state penitentiary but her alleged involvement in one of the intricate drug distribution syndicates perpetrated within the confines of the prison cell at the time when she was the Secretary of the Department of Justice which has control and supervision of state penitentiaries.

 

De Lima had served as Chairperson of the Commission of Human Rights and for months subjected then Mayor Rodrigo Duterte to a probe on alleged extra-judicial killings carried out by the Davao Death Squads she claimed were organized by Duterte. While she claimed that there were thousands of EJK victims buried in a common burial ground she failed to produce a single piece of evidence. Not even when she was DOJ Secretary. Her failure is expected. DDS is non-existent as it was a phantom force conceptualized by the Integrated Nation Police as a psychological force against the communist liquidation forces way back in 1984. Duterte was a neophyte lawyer then and has no influence whatsoever in the local and national government. Any which way you look at it, DDS and the so-called EJK attributed to Duterte are farcical before as they are today.

 

Fast forward, de Lima ran for Senator and by a quirk of circumstance, so did Rodrigo Duterte for President. Both won De Lima by the skin of her teeth while Duterte a stunning victory over the well-oiled political machinery of his adversaries.

 

De Lima, who is still consumed by her motive to indict Duterte, renewed her personal agenda to implicate Duterte on EJK and other forms of human rights violation. Duterte, on the other hand, initiated an unrelenting campaign against drug syndicates and other crimes that were practically institutionalized by the inept government of Benigno Aquino III which nearly pushed the country into narco and failed state. She had likewise extrapolated EJK death statistics from 246 to 10,000 plus using perjured witnesses in senate hearings. Indeed there were casualties in the unrelenting drive against drug syndicates but police records and hers do 1not match. De Lima also never took cognizance of more than 1-million drug pushers and drug dependents who had surrendered and rehabilitated.

 

Death statistics attributed to drugs in the Philippines are a drop in the bucket compared to that in the US and its next-door neighbor Mexico. It is therefore cryptic why American Congress would put to task President Duterte and order him to release de Lima from detention. Was there a conspiracy in the past that the US is now unabashedly compelled to get de Lima out of the calaboose?

 

Banning Duterte and those perceived to be behind de Lima's incarceration partakes of a childish act. I am presently traveling across Europe and I can swear there are more places to see here than America. My wife and I are with Australian and New Zealanders and none of them has a US itinerary. Switzerland for one is swarming with Chinese tourists an Aussie acquaintance quipped, " Are we in Lucerne or in China?" So there. It's time some American politicians temper their misplaced arrogance.