Advancing Duterte’s Fascist Agenda in the Philippines

The Nightmare (1781) by John Henry Fuseli

ADVANCING DUTERTE’S FASCIST AGENDA IN THE PHILIPPINES

DUMBO GOVERNANCE BY MURDER

Duterte is miniaturizing the entire country into his own Davao City to suit his limited competence. He’s doing to the country what he does in Davao City. Kill people to scare other people into submission to his every whim then let the economy manage itself.

Nestor Antonio Diaz @nad0227

Philippine Daily Inquirer

December 4, 2018

Concise, accurate summary of Duterte governance.

THE 7 NO’S OF DUTERTISMO

John Nery | Newsstand
June 13, 2017

In its fully evolved state, Dutertismo, as an ideology of power, is defined by its No’s. Appropriately enough, they number seven in all—a proper Marcosian touch.

1. No Cure: Its signature program, the campaign against drugs, was based on the notion that there was no remedy for drug addition. Addicts cannot be rehabilitated.

2. No Innocents: This same signature program has claimed thousands of lives — including those of mere toddlers, children who were four or five years old. Each of these deaths will be justified, as necessary “collateral damage.”

3. No Rights: Constitutional safeguards, even those expressly included to make the imposition of martial law more difficult than before, will be treated as suggestions—all subsumed under the “war on drugs.”

4. No West: In Dutertismo’s ideal world, Duterte will complete the repudiation of the Americans and other Western sources of influence, in the name of an irritable nationalism.

5. No Criticism: This irritable nationalism is triggered by criticism, especially of alleged human rights violations. It will find expression in a new foreign policy dictated by the need to form alliances with those countries which will not criticize us.

6. No Truth: Dutertismo welcomes the use of “creative imagination” and “alternative facts,” because a post-truth regime makes accountability more difficult, sometimes even impossible.

7. No Limits: The be-all and end-all of Dutertismo in its mature stage is the accumulation of all power, for power’s sake. As early as August 2015, Duterte was already entertaining plans for “constitutional dictatorship.”

What we do, in the face of all these No’s, lies, truly, in our hands.

https://johnnery.wordpress.com/2017/06/13/the-7-nos-of-dutertismo/

Nos. 3, 4, and 6 are probably the most critical because upholding and protecting human rights, in particular, the freedom of the press to investigate and to tell the truth, and advancing the international liberal democratic order promoted by the West constitute effective checks against the abuse of power by and oppressive authoritarianism of would-be dictators in the Philippines.

See also:

THE ROT AT THE CORE IS DUTERTISMO

By: John Nery - @jnery_newsstand

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:07 AM November 27, 2018

Progress in advancing Duterte’s Fascist Anti-Democratic Agenda:

- Resorting to illegal death squads so that it becomes more and more a norm of political life and everyday governance

- Targeting members of the political opposition for death squad killings by slandering them from the presidential pulpit, thereby preparing the ground for their extrajudicial murder subsequently
- Arresting opposition leaders and vocal government critics on the basis of spurious, trumped-up charges
- Issuing executive orders which are unnecessary for the regular deployment of police and the military, in order to prime the population for the baseless declaration of martial law
- Extending martial law in Mindanao in the absence of actual rebellion and in violation of the 1987 Constitution

- Populating the executive branch of civilian government, especially at the highest levels, with military retirees
- Installing a CCTV surveillance system—what is in effect an electronic spy system engineered by Communist China—which is readily susceptible to the abuse of the constitutional rights of the Philippine people, in order to increase his authoritarian leverage in power and to maintain himself in his position. Furthermore, the surveillance system supports Communist China in its hegemonic strategy to dominate the Philippines—indeed, the entire Asian region—and furthers its aggressive plan to illegally annex the international waters of the West Philippine Sea, and the territories therein, especially by promoting vassalage among dictatorial Southeast Asian leaders and regimes.

DUTERTE DEATH SQUADS ILLEGAL, SAY CRITICS

By the Inquirer Staff / 05:30 AM November 29, 2018

Critics on Wednesday roundly denounced President Rodrigo Duterte’s announcement that he would form a “death squad” to hunt down communist rebels and their sympathizers as alarm, skepticism and legal questions met his plan.

Speaking at the groundbreaking of the Panguil Bay Bridge in Tubod town, Lanao del Norte, on Wednesday, the President for the second time said he would deploy “assassination teams to kill” alleged hit men of the communist New People’s Army (NPA).

His critics said the plan could trigger a killing spree similar to his bloody war on drugs and worsen an existing climate of fear and impunity.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, however, doubted the President was serious because, as a lawyer, he knew it would be “illegal and criminal” to organize any group of assassins.

…On Tuesday, Mr. Duterte announced that he would create his own “sparrow” group, the popular name for the NPA special partisan unit that was responsible for assassinating local officials, police and soldiers in the 1970s and 1980s.

“They will do nothing but look for idlers who are prospective New People’s Army members and take them out,” he said hours after declaring a “full-scale war” on communist rebels.

Commission on Human Rights Chair Chito Gascon reminded the President that international humanitarian law required states to use only regular armed forces under strict military discipline to carry out security operations.

Extrajudicial killings

“Thus, this strictly prohibits death squads under all circumstances,” Gascon said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Mr. Duterte’s pronouncement affirmed the existence of the state policy of extrajudicial killings against both suspected drug offenders and government critics.

“This new policy will only worsen the ongoing drug war-fueled human rights calamity in the Philippines,” said Carlos Conde, HRW Philippines researcher.

According to the militant indigenous group Pasaka, the President’s plan was an admission that his administration was involved in state-sponsored killings that targeted activists and critics.

Kerlan Fanagel, chair of Pasaka-Southern Mindanao, said Mr. Duterte’s statements would “encourage government forces to kill political enemies” but the move could also be seen as “a sign of desperation” of the administration.

The left-wing Bagong Alyansang Makabayan said in a statement that Duterte was “inciting a killing spree against government critics, human rights defenders and just about everyone else tagged by the government as ‘Red.’”

Striking fear

Opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes said Mr. Duterte wanted “to strike fear again into the hearts and minds of the Filipinos by forewarning that there would be another round of killings.”

“Fear is his only way to keep people in check,” he said.

The Liberal Party president, Sen. Francis Pangilinan, said creating death squads and daily killings were not the solution to the nation’s ills—unemployment, high prices and low wages.

“It will only turn our country into a howling, lawless wilderness,” Pangilinan said.

Due process

…Mr. Duterte has been dogged by accusations that he ran a death squad when he was mayor of Davao City and oversaw a fierce crackdown on crime.

He has denied the allegations but with his own statement, the creation and “continuing existence of the ‘Duterte death squad’ is no longer a mystery,” according to Anakpawis Rep. Ariel Casilao.

This group of assassins operates “within and outside the formal organization of state security forces,” Casilao added.

State policy

Gabriela Rep. Emmi de Jesus said the President’s order would only promote “state gangsterism and vigilantism” that would add more ordinary people loosely tagged as rebels to the list of victims of extrajudicial killings

“If anything, this affirms the horrible fact that mass murder is the official state policy of the Duterte regime,” she said.

Mr. Duterte only cited the “sparrows” to justify actions by his own death squad for the “mass murder of mere suspects who are not even the target of any court warrant of arrest,” said exiled Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison.

Sison denied there were still sparrow units in the country’s urban centers.

The Visayas and Negros human rights group Katungod-Sinirangan Bisayas said death squad killings could result in “mountain-like pile of bodies.”

“This program is yet another scheme to suppress the people and maintain his political control despite the people’s obvious rejection of his leadership,” the group said.

Massacre

By doing what it plans to do, the Duterte administration will not be different from the rebels, said San Carlos Bishop Gerardo Alminasa in Negros Occidental.

“Eliminating one’s perceived enemies by killing them will not necessarily solve our problem and secure the peace we long for as long as social inequality exists among us,” he added.

Rights advocates seeking justice for eight T’boli-Manobo tribe members who were massacred last year warned that the military’s expanding role in government was getting a boost from Mr. Duterte’s open support for violence through death squads.

Task Force Tamasco, a coalition of human rights groups, blamed the massacre on the unresolved dispute between the ancestral domain claims of the T’boli-Manubo Sdaf Claimants Organization (Tamasco) and an allegedly irregular grant of an integrated forest management agreement in favor of a coffee plantation.

Instead of dealing with the problems of the T’boli-Manobo tribe, the government deployed soldiers and paramilitary groups and tagged the tribe members as communist rebels, the group said.

“We may have a President who is a civilian, but he has the mind of a war freak,” said Judy Pasimio of the human rights group Lilak (of the Purple Action for Indigenous Women’s Rights). —WITH REPORTS FROM DJ YAP, CHRISTINE O. AVENDANO, MELVIN GASCON, MARLON RAMOS, MART SAMBALUD, DELFIN T. MALLARI JR., CARLA P. GOMEZ, AND JOEY A. GABIETA

PRESIDENTIAL SLANDER

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:28 AM November 29, 2018

Twice in the last few days, President Duterte has unleashed tirades against a ranking clergy of the Catholic Church. First, he accused a certain “Bishop David” of taking church donations for his family, supposedly with a video to prove the bishop’s theft of fruits offered during the Mass.

Later, the President upped the ante by airing the suspicion that the bishop could be into drugs.

“David! I’m beginning to suspect why you’re frequently roaming at night. You could be into drugs,” the President said in a speech in Davao City. In the same breath, he warned he would have a certain bishop’s head cut off if he was into illegal drugs.

Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, or Bishop Ambo, as he is known to his parishioners at the Diocese of Caloocan, responded with a touch of humor.

No, sir, he assured the President, he was never into drugs, not even maintenance drugs; only fruit shakes and vitamins. Far from being into drugs, the prelate said he was only helping rehabilitate drug addicts.

David knows whereof he speaks. He has described his diocese — comprising Caloocan, Malabon and Navotas — as a “killing field” in the administration’s antidrug war, where scores have died including 17-year-old student Kian delos Santos, who was mercilessly killed in a widely condemned police operation in August 2017.

In partnership with the local governments of the three cities, David leads a program putting drug addicts on the road to rehabilitation and giving scholarships to orphaned children.

As the latest target in a vilification campaign against the Catholic Church, David joins a long list of Filipinos who have been publicly accused of crimes by the President without evidence, or cursed, shamed and even jailed mainly for being critics of the bloody war on drugs.

The slander is unfortunate for its wanton disregard for evidence, flawed logic (roaming at night equals involvement in illegal drugs) and the reckless ease with which the Chief Executive dispenses serious accusations from his bully pulpit.

It is dangerous, because the President’s word carries a lot of weight. Whether serious or said in jest, his pronouncements have the effect of policy and can have far-reaching ramifications inside and outside the government machinery.

When he talked about a “Red October” ouster plot a month ago, the military and the police were hard put to supply details to the script.

Publicly putting a bishop, or any Filipino for that matter, under suspicion of involvement in illegal drugs makes that person a potential target of rogue elements who are, it seems, having a field day taking advantage of the current culture of violence.

In this time of “Tokhang,” it is dangerous to be accused by no less than the President of being involved in illegal drugs, as shown by the many deaths arising from being included in the administration’s so-called drug list.

When similar slanderous accusations are hurled his way, the President is understandably upset regarding insinuations about his health, his human rights record or the conduct of his children.

Thus, the investigations launched against his No. 1 critic, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who linked the President’s son Paolo to the P6.4-billion shabu shipment from China last year.

If the President is hurt by unsubstantiated charges, it behooves the highest official of the land to apply the same standard to others.

The laws on libel, cyberlibel and the like under the Revised Penal Code are meant to protect everyone, including the dead, from oral or written defamation. Because in a civilized society, people cannot go about ruining other’s reputations without consequences.

Under the rule of law, citizens have the inherent right to be protected from hate speech — including, but especially from, their own President.

DISTURBING PATTERN

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:24 AM December 05, 2018

On Wednesday last week, it was former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo, ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro and 16 teachers, congressional staffers and pastors. On Monday, it was news website Rappler’s CEO Maria Ressa.

The latest wave of arrests against vocal government critics paints a disturbing pattern of a crackdown on dissent under the Duterte administration.

Ocampo, Castro and 16 others were arrested by police in a checkpoint in Talaingod, Davao del Norte, on the evening of Nov. 28.

By all accounts, Ocampo’s group was part of a solidarity mission that responded to a distressed call from teachers in an indigenous “lumad” school in Barangay Palma Gil.

The teachers reported that the 56th Infantry Brigade of the military and the paramilitary group Alamara had imposed a food blockade and closed the Salugpongan Ta’ Tanu Igkanogon Community Learning Center (STTICLC) schools, which they accused of being fronts of the New People’s Army.

Fearing for their safety, the teachers fled with their students until they met up with Ocampo’s group.

On their way to Tagum, the convoy was flagged down close to midnight and the rescuers and teachers, including 14 children, were held at the police jail.

…The charges?

Kidnapping and human trafficking — accusations that raised many eyebrows and even laughter for their sheer incongruity with the circumstances that brought Ocampo and company to the area.

…A notable member of the Duterte Cabinet, Foreign Secretary Teddy Locsin Jr., called the charges against Ocampo “bullsh*t,” while Sen. Francis Escudero said the charges were “hard to believe and preposterous.”

Even Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, under whose presidential administration some cases were filed against Ocampo, said he and Castro deserved “a certain level of dignified and respectful treatment.”

…It begs asking if the charges brought upon Ocampo and other critics is part of a bigger witch hunt by an administration that has shown aggressive intolerance to criticism.

In Ressa’s case, the enmity of the President toward her and her organization has been undisguised and sustained.

In February, Rappler was banned from covering the President; in March, the Securities and Exchange Commission revoked Rappler’s operating license for supposedly violating foreign ownership rules, followed by the filing of tax evasion charges by the Bureau of Internal Revenue; and in October, the Department of Justice issued its indictment.

The same weekend as Ocampo et al.’s arrest, a warrant of arrest was issued against Ressa. Ressa preempted her arrest by presenting herself to the judge on Monday to post bail.

Ocampo and Ressa are but the latest names in a seemingly politically motivated campaign of retaliation that started with the arrest of Sen. Leila de Lima, the ouster of Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, the cases filed against Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, and the regular shaming of churchmen, human rights advocates, activists, media owners and practitioners, and other perceived thorns on the side of the President.

In a healthy democracy, legitimate and peaceful dissenting voices are essential to debating government policies and scrutinizing the actions of people in power, for the common good of the people in whose name such governance is being carried out.

Absent that space, or the necessary questioning of the burgeoning environment of repression, what may follow is the country’s unstoppable tailspin back to its dark days: midnight arrests of critics and clear-as-day assaults on a free press.

DUTERTE ORDER TO DEPLOY TROOPS STUMPS LACSON

Inquirer.net

07:25 AM November 26, 2018

Sen. Panfilo Lacson on Sunday said Memorandum Order No. 32 (MO 32) was baffling, as President Duterte could deploy more troops to the provinces just by giving orders to the military.

Lacson asked whether the memorandum was part of a plan for the declaration of martial law or the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.

The President issued on Thursday MO 32 authorizing the deployment of more soldiers and policemen to three provinces in the Visayas and a province in the Bicol region to “suppress lawless violence and acts of terror” in those parts of the country.

The order also authorized intensification of intelligence operations and the investigation and prosecution of people behind “acts of violence.”

…On Sunday, Lacson, a former chief of the Philippine National Police, asked why a memorandum was necessary when all the President needed to do was order the Armed Forces chief of staff or the secretary of national defense to deploy more forces to the four areas.

Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1057085/duterte-order-to-deploy-troops-stumps-lacson#ixzz5f1KK8zHv

OPPOSITION SENATORS INSIST THERE’S NO BASIS FOR MARTIAL LAW EXTENSION IN MINDANAO

Gaea Katreena Cabico (philstar.com) - December 4, 2018 - 4:17pm

MANILA, Philippines — Opposition lawmakers on Tuesday stressed that the plan to extend the implementation of martial is unconstitutional, citing there is no ground that necessitates such move.

Armed Forces of the Philippines chief Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr. on Monday said the military will recommend another year-long extension of martial law in Mindanao, citing continuing threats of terrorism in the area.

Philippine National Police chief Dir. Gen. Oscar Albayalde said the police force is joining the AFP in seeking an extension as it would ensure peace and order in the plebiscite for the Bangsamoro Organic Law and the midterm elections next year.

But Senate minority leader Franklin Drilon said the extension of military rule in the southern Philippines continues to be in violation of the 1987 Constitution.

“The Constitution is clear that martial law may be declared only in cases of actual rebellion when public safety requires it. I may sound like a broken record but for the nth time, I would repeat: there is no actual rebellion. Rebellion no longer persists in Mindanao,” Drilon said.

Galvez’s statement that continuing threat is “lurking” in Mindanao shows that there is no actual rebellion happening, the opposition senator noted.

“There may be threats of rebellion but what the Constitution clearly requires as a ground for declaring and extending martial law is the presence of actual rebellion,” Drilon said.

He added: “Let us not normalize martial law. Instead, let us help bring back normalcy in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Mindanao.”

Sen. Francis Pangilinan, for his part, urged the security forces to match their request for martial law extension “with hard and justifiable facts.”

“For instance, [they] should answer the question: How big and wide is the threat in the region that necessitates it to be placed under such declaration?” Pangilinan said.

He also said that the extension of military rule in the entire island shows the failure of the declaration in Mindanao.

“This is so because the military might never solve the people’s woes deeply rooted in poverty, lack of jobs and absence of basic services,” Pangilinan said.

…Rep. Edcel Lagman (Albay) on Tuesday vowed that he will challenge any plan to extend martial law in Mindanao for another year.

MILITARIZING DSWD

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:10 AM November 29, 2018

We denounce the termination of Social Welfare Undersecretaries Malou Turalde, Hope Hervilla and Mae Fe Ancheta Templa “for their affiliation with leftist groups.”

The appointment of former brigadier general Rolly Bautista as Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) secretary will only legitimize the attacks on the vulnerable and further endanger marginalized people who seek services and refuge from the DSWD, a department that is civilian in nature.

This proves that the Duterte administration favors fascist military retirees over undersecretaries from people’s organizations.

Furthermore, it is not remote that these undersecretaries will be replaced by military retirees as well.

CHILDREN’S REHABILITATION CENTER, childrehabphilippines@yahoo.com.ph

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/117773/militarizing-dswd#ixzz5aBRwnSsv

Condonation by the Philippine population of Duterte’s murderous fascist agenda has led to progressive moral degradation in the country.

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