A4
Opinion
TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 2017
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EDITORIAL
T
HERE appears to be some kind of national pride that President Rodrigo Duterte is leading the online poll of TIME Magazine as of Monday. TIME 100 is a list of the most influential people in the world. Other prominent names in the running are Pope Francis, Russian president Vladimir Putin, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Duterte is ahead of all of them at 5 percent of all votes.
The list of names was released March 24; online voting is allowed until April 16. The final list will be known April 20. The magazine’s editors will choose the final list, of course, but it said it wanted to give readers some say in the matter. Certainly it is remarkable that the President,
Adelle Chua, Editor
Influence
in office for less than a year after an unexpected electoral victory, would top the online poll. How many city mayors from down South, after all, have swept into the presidency so soon after declaring their intention to govern the entire nation? Just one—this one. Then again, it is not clear whether the name recall that Duterte inspires is a result of worldwide appreciation of his influence, an army of online support-
ers, or notoriety as a result of the controversial manner in which he fights the drug menace —and in which he conducts himself. Influence, too is a rather murky way to describe a personality especially when the basis of your information are the votes of just those who have internet access. What is influence, anyway, and how is it measured? How do you factor in the influence—or absence thereof—of the person on those who are not
able to say they have been influenced, or who are not even aware that such a poll exists in the first place? That Mr. Duterte has shot to international prominence so soon after he has taken office is an accomplishment in itself. Other leaders come and go, and millions from other parts of the world hardly know their names. It is foolhardy, however, to fall into the trap that this popularity contest validates the quality of how a per-
son conducts himself in the field he is in. In Mr. Duterte’s case, it is too soon to tell whether everything he is doing affects us all in the way we envisioned his brand of change would. Trumping all others is no reason to gloat. It must instead prompt one to evaluate whether the dent he is making is as good and as profound as that of the rest of the names on the list. The best, most effective personalities are not always the loudest or the most popular.
Choosing human rights and peace
Digong trains guns on DAP LOWDOWN
JOJO A. ROBLES I’VE OFTEN wondered when President Rodrigo Duterte would get around to looking into the late, unlamented Disbursement Acceleration Program, that novel method of spending government funds by seizing the budgets of agencies that had been given the money and allocating it somewhere else. Duterte, who has always tried to avoid directly confronting his predecessor about the scandals that bedeviled it, finally took aim at DAP last weekend. During a press conference in Cagayan de Oro City, Duterte said he has proof that former President Noynoy Aquino, his Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and at least one senator, Antonio Trillanes IV, abused DAP “like nobody’s business.” This happened, the President said, even after the Supreme Court had declared the program
unconstitutional. According to a suit for plunder earlier filed against Aquino, Abad and other officials involved in the controversial expenditure program before the Ombudsman, fully P142.23 billion was spent through DAP in the first three years of the previous administration. To put that in context, the so-called pork barrel scam ran by jailed businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles was supposed to have stolen P10 billion in government funds earmarked for projects identified by members of Congress. Even if it was true, as Aquino claimed shortly after the DAP controversy broke, that only 9 percent of the program’s funds were diverted to members of Congress to pay for their pet projects, the amount would still be more than all the pork allegedly stolen from the pork barrel funds by Napoles. And that still would not include the 91 percent of the money that was “impounded” by Aquino from agencies that could not spend the funds in as little as six months after receiving them that
has mostly been unaccounted for. What makes Duterte’s claim that DAP was illegally used even more compelling was the March 3 decision of Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales clearing
Duterte shouldn’t make people believe that he is serious about DAP and then fail to follow through.
Aquino and all other officials except Abad of charges that they misused DAP. Morales gave Abad the equivalent of a slap on the wrist, finding evidence that the former budget chief could
only be held liable for usurpation of Congress’ power to legislate and demanding that he forfeit three months’ salary, even if he was no longer in government. Perhaps Duterte has had enough of Trillanes’ brand of criticism, which is why the President is only now threatening to present proof that the senator pocketed DAP funds. But that is a minor issue for me and many other Filipinos who have nearly given up the hope that Aquino, Abad and many other officials of the previous government will finally be haled to court to answer the very serious charges leveled against them. If Duterte really has the goods on DAP that could throw Aquino and his minions in jail and has decided to reveal them, I’ll even send a thank-you note to Trillanes for getting the president’s goat. After all, in many instances in the past, Duterte has expressed a palpable lack of interest in pursuing charges against his immediate predecessor. But just like the effort to impeach Vice President Leni Robredo cannot be stopped by Du-
terte, the move to hold Aquino accountable for the sins his administration committed is not really dependent on the desires of the incumbent. And Aquino must certainly be made to answer for DAP, now that he no longer enjoys immunity from suit. Duterte needn’t bother acting as the prosecutor of Aquino, just like Aquino made it his business to personally go after his own predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. In fact, the focus on political vendetta during the Aquino years was largely responsible for the lack of any real accomplishment by the feckless only son of Cory. Duterte only has to turn over whatever evidence he has on DAP to the proper prosecuting authorities and he can continue doing the work that he needs to do to improve the economy and solve the problems of illegal drugs, criminality and corruption. The courts will do the rest. What Duterte shouldn’t do is to make people believe that he is serious in making Aquino, Abad and, yes, Trillanes, among Turn to A5
SINCE its establishment in the late 70s to monitor the Helsinki Accords, which focused on violations of human rights in the Soviet Union and bloc, Human Rights Watch has been at the forefront in the fight against injustice and human rights violations throughout the world. I have followed its work in the last 40 years and, as a scholar and professor of human rights, I can say that HRW is an exceptional and exemplary organization that has been fair, credible, independent, objective, impartial, and consistent in implementing its mandate. It does not come then as a surprise that it decided to look at Duterte’s controversial war on drugs. In the excellently documented and written report entitled License to Kill, the Human Rights Watch investigated, from October 2016 to January 2017, 24 incidents of killings of alleged drug dealers and users, involving 32 victims, that occurred in Metro Manila, the National Capital Region of the Philippines, and nearby provinces since President Rodrigo Duterte took office on June 30, 2016. However, the report made clear that this is but a small percentage of the more than 7,080 such killings that the latest statistics from the Philippine National Police indicate have occurred between July 1, 2016 and Jan. 31, 2017. Following below are excerpts from the report. On the profile of most of the victims: “. . . the victims of drug-related killings by the police or unidentified gunmen were poor (the exception was a middle-class victim who appears to have been killed as a result of mistaken identity), and many were suspected drug users, not dealers at all.” I have personally validated this by reaching out to victims and their families, including media people covering the killings and Church people and other individuals helping loved ones of those who have been murdered. There is no doubt in my mind that what we are seeing going on in the Philippines is a massacre of the poor. On holding the president and his men accountable: “No evidence thus far shows that Duterte planned or ordered specific extrajudicial killings. But Duterte’s repeated calls for killings as part of his anti-drug campaign could constitute acts instigating law enforcement to commit the crime of murder. His statements encouraging vigilantes among the general population to Turn to A5
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