Duterte's Authoritarian Toolbox

DUTERTE’S AUTHORITARIAN TOOLBOX

Tools actively being used by Duterte to advance dictatorship and fascism, and to degrade democracy in the Philippines:

- Weaponizing the law
- Drawing up unfounded, arbitrary, and politically motivated state manufactured blacklists

- Red-tagging (a type of state manufactured blacklist)
- Extrajudicial killing
- Political assassination

- Degrading the conduct of free and fair elections through state intimidation

CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT WHAT?

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:08 AM February 13, 2020

At the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group’s 67th founding anniversary celebration last Monday, Solicitor General Jose Calida declared that the filing of sedition complaints against several opposition figures, notably Vice President Leni Robredo, was a high point of his office’s cooperation with the Philippine National Police-CIDG.

…Mere hours after those remarks, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ) demolished Calida’s boast when it cleared Robredo and a number of other respondents of the charges. Exonerated with Robredo were six churchmen — Archbishop Socrates Villegas, Bishops Pablo Virgilio David, Honesto Ongtioco, and Teodoro Bacani, “running priest” Fr. Robert Reyes and former education secretary La Salle Br. Armin Luistro — along with 2019 opposition senatorial candidates Chel Diokno, Erin Tañada and Florin Hilbay, former senator Bam Aquino, former Magdalo representative Gary Alejano, senators Leila de Lima and Risa Hontiveros, and certain members of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines.

The charges against this virtual convention of supposed co-conspirators were all dropped for lack of evidence, according to the DOJ; or, as Undersecretary Markk L. Perete put it in more lawyerly wording: “In finding no probable cause for sedition or inciting to sedition, the [prosecution] panel found the element of public and tumultuous uprising wanting.”

The same panel did, however, find probable cause to indict, for the lesser charge of “conspiracy to commit sedition,” 11 respondents, including former senator Antonio Trillanes IV; Catholic priests Fr. Albert Alejo and Fr. Flaviano Villanueva; and Peter Joemel Advincula, alias “Bikoy,” whose videos that were aired at the height of the 2019 election campaign season alleged that President Duterte’s relatives and close political allies were involved in the illegal drug trade.

The DOJ panel of prosecutors, in its 57-page resolution, said Trillanes et al. were indicted because, based mainly on Advincula’s testimony, they found “interlocking pieces of proof” that showed a “complete picture of the grand conspiracy between and among some respondents to create hatred or revenge against the President and his family with the end view of toppling and destabilizing the current administration.”

The downgraded charge against Trillanes et al., filed before the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court on Monday, has, however, left some legal experts scratching their heads.

…“If there is no finding of inciting to commit sedition because of absence of evidence on inciting the people to rise ‘publicly and tumultuously’ against the government, how then could there be a ‘conspiracy to commit sedition’?” asked a bewildered Mel Sta. Maria, dean of Far Eastern University’s Institute of Law, in a Facebook post.

“The most important element of sedition is public and tumultuous uprising. If that element is not proven, there can be no sedition. And if there is no sedition, how can there be ‘conspiracy to commit sedition’? This is weird.”

“ALL must have been exonerated,” he concluded.

It appears that throw anything against the wall and see which one sticks was the OSG-CIDG’s main battle plan in this Swiss cheese of a case designed to harass the opposition. …

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/127336/conspiracy-to-commit-what#ixzz6iove90om

TERRORISM FINANCING?

By: Ma. Ceres P. Doyo - @inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:05 AM February 13, 2020

So like an intractable virus.

With the Duterte administration’s unrelenting crackdown on its perceived enemies, it is no surprise for members of its officialdom to hit at even those who are harmless, powerless, and clueless vis-à-vis their vicious intents.

The latest in the crosshairs is again the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP), whose Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) accounts were frozen by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC). RMP is one of the task forces of the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines.

Unknown to RMP, on Dec. 26, 2019, the AMLC issued Resolution TF-18 which ordered a 20-day freeze for three RMP accounts with the BPI. It ordered the bank to submit details of RMP-related bank accounts. The AMLC could file, through the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), a petition to extend the freeze order to six months with the Court of Appeals.RMP said this latest crackdown was based on the AMLC’s very vague reasoning that there is “probable cause that the BPI accounts of RMP are related to terrorism financing.”

RMP national coordinator Sister Elsa Compuesto on the crackdown: “On the same day, a letter was sent by the AMLC to the BPI main office containing said orders. Then on Jan. 9 and 13 this year, RMP was notified by several BPI branches that its accounts have been suspended: two for the national office and nine for the Northern Mindanao sub-region.

“We vehemently deny involvement in any form of financing terrorism. Donations and funding received by the RMP are used to implement projects and programs to help the marginalized and oppressed. In contrast to the government’s false narrative, RMP has delivered much-needed services to rural communities across the country for 50 years. We have our mission and community partners to confirm this. In freezing our bank accounts, the AMLC is only depriving the rural poor of the help and services they deserve, and that the government refuses to provide.”

“Terrorism financing” sounds to me like a new crime classification in the book, straight out of a paranoid mind and, if not that, a new invention to simply harass and make life awful for those who would not pay obeisance to the powers-that-be.

…Government elements had tagged RMP as a communist front, hence RMP’s need for a writ of amparo.

…Still facing charges filed by the military are RMP members, among them, three senior citizens: Belardo, 80, for perjury; RMP Northern Mindanao sub-region coordinator Sister Emma Teresita Cupin, 63, of the Missionary Sisters of Mary, for arson, kidnapping, and robbery; and lay worker Angie Ipong, 74, for frustrated murder.

Two of RMP’s volunteer teachers — Melissa Comiso and Nori Torregosa — are still in jail for what RMP calls “trumped-up charges.” RMP-run schools for children of indigenous communities have been forcibly closed.

Comes now the suspicion of “terrorism financing.” RMP had openly declared that one of its main sources of funds is the European Union. …

[Send feedback to cerespd@gmail.com]

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/127330/terrorism-financing-2#ixzz6ioxREDCI

DRUG LISTS AND OTHER AUTHORITARIAN CONTROL SYSTEMS

By: Randy David - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 09:10 AM April 14, 2019

It has always been the ambition of governments that seek dramatic changes in society to try to shape the mindset of their citizens with a view to controlling their behavior.  This they typically do through the deployment of a system of penalties and incentives aimed at stamping out deviant behavior and promoting “good” behavior, as officially defined.

A key tool in this control system is the production of lists usually drawn in a non-transparent manner, and not amenable to careful scrutiny. Such are the drug lists that have been drawn by the Duterte administration at the national and local levels.

The names found in these lists may have been culled from various sources, but, outside of the Philippine National Police and the state drug agencies, no one knows exactly who and how they were produced.  At the local level, people believe that most of the names were taken from the roster of those who voluntarily “surrendered” in the early phase of the antidrug campaign.  They identified themselves to the police because they were made to believe that doing so would spare them from being arrested or, worse, killed in drug raids.

…publication of these names is tantamount to a kiss of death.  Intimidated and fearful of what may happen to them, they have little recourse but to deny their involvement in the drug trade, even as they quietly beg people close to the President to have their names removed from the list.

They would give or pay anything to achieve this, even if, technically speaking, these lists have no legal value.  Under the rule of law, if these lists have any basis at all, the individuals so named as “drug personalities” ought to be charged in court and be given the chance to disprove the allegations against them.  But we are not talking here of the legal use of these lists, but of their weaponization in the political domain.

…some rulers will…try it.  Drunk with power,…always at the cost of distorting the promise of politics and at the risk of destroying all of society itself.

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/120764/drug-lists-and-other-authoritarian-control-systems#ixzz6BQoCmhPZ

MALACAÑANG’S ‘MATRIX’

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 09:16 AM April 25, 2019

What is the “Matrix”?

“It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”That’s what the wise elder Morpheus tells Neo in the beloved sci-fi flick “The Matrix,” a movie about a listless young man realizing that everything he had been told about his world was a lie, and that he and his fellow human beings had been living in a simulated reality called, well, the Matrix.

…Pressed later for any evidence that would support the “Oust Duterte matrix,” presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo could only manage his usual exquisite contortions before finally giving up on any rational explanation: “Galing kay Presidente, e. Paniwalaan niyo (It’s from the President, so you should believe it).”

Where did the President get his information? Panelo said he didn’t know, but “considering he is the President, he has so many sources, e validated ’yan (it’s assumed to be validated).”

It took less than a day for observers and plain citizens alike to punch yawning holes in the so-called validated matrix.

Winnie Monsod, one of the names mentioned, was identified as a Rappler journalist. She is not; she is a columnist in this paper.

Veteran journalist Inday Espina Varona is not a lawyer, much less connected with the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers. Varona, who used to work for The Manila Times, was obviously chuckling when she posted online: “My former employer just promoted this University of the Philippines dropout to lawyer. Journalist to lawyer. Just on those glaring errors of fact, that article fails big time.”

Other big-time falsehoods in the “validated” document: Luz Rimban, a founding trustee of the media organization Vera Files, said she had been out of the group since 2018 to focus on her duties at the Ateneo de Manila University.

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, linked by the document to journalist Ellen Tordesillas as alleged collaborators on the release of the recent “Bikoy” videos where an unidentified man accuses the President and his family of overseeing the drug trade, flatly denied being in touch with Tordesillas, or running any stories on the videos for that matter.

Tordesillas herself dismissed the charge as “hilarious,” adding: “What I find disturbing is, if this is the kind of intelligence report that the President gets and bases his actions and policies on, the country is in big trouble.”

Indeed — hilarious and disturbing. This absurd “matrix” — the latest one, anyway, from an administration dangerously besotted with funny-looking diagrams meant to intimidate pet enemies such as alleged drug lords, detractors and critics, and basically anyone calling bull on the Palace — is exactly what the movie’s definition of the word is: something that’s being pulled over the eyes of the people to blind them from the truth.

But hardly anyone is fooled. Public laughter and savage memes greeted the release of the matrix, and even the Armed Forces, it seems, isn’t buying.

While Panelo was turning himself into a pretzel conjuring an “oust-Duterte” scenario, AFP Public Affairs Office chief Col. Noel Detoyato was quick to swat down the talk: “As of now, we have not seen any specific threat,” he said.

Never mind The Manila Times, but there goes, once again, the credibility of Malacañang and its hapless coven of fabulists, whisperers and amateur illustrators.

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/120953/malacanangs-matrix#ixzz6D8VTQRX5

If a student submits a paper (that makes claims) without sources or references, the paper is likely to get a failing grade. If a president conjures a matrix of sorts without any supporting document, we are asked to simply trust the president. What world are we in again?

Jan Robert R. Go, @WuAnping
Philippine Daily Inquirer (April 25, 2019)

14 DEAD FARMERS: WHY?

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:09 AM April 03, 2019

The calendar says otherwise, but with the way horrific things are proceeding, it would seem we’re back in the bad old days of the Marcos dictatorship.

Jogged by reports of the recent killing of 14 farmers in Negros Oriental, memory leapt more than 30 years back to the Escalante Massacre of Sept. 20, 1985, when farmers in Negros Occidental protesting their miserable lives and crying for land, rice and better working conditions saw 20 of their fellows mowed down and killed by soldiers and other agents of the State.

Then as now, it was SOP for authorities to view protesters and dissenters as troublemakers, as communist rebels, as criminals. No one has yet been held liable for those cold-blooded murders.

And the pattern continues.

Early on March 30 in Negros Oriental, 14 persons suspected of being “hard-core criminals” or hit men and sympathizers of the communist New People’s Army were shot and killed by arresting teams from the Philippine National Police Regional Public Safety Battalion, the PNP Special Action Force, certain police stations, and the Philippine Army.

…And as in an old song, the refrain was familiar; the manner of execution partook of the apparent modus operandi in the Duterte administration’s unrelenting war on drugs: killed while supposedly resisting arrest or a search for unregistered guns — “nanlaban.”

The killings occurred in Canlaon City and in the towns of Manjuyod and Santa Catalina, and, per the accounts of family members and other eyewitnesses, in a manner chillingly similar to the continuing antidrug operations in Metro Manila and nearby provinces: masked men in camouflage descending in the dead of night, the targets clangorously awakened from asleep, their kin ordered out of the house, then the sound of gunshots announcing the evil deed of murder.

…Rights groups said the targets were leaders of local farmer organizations tagged by the government as “legal fronts” of the communist rebel movement.

…Where were the supposedly recovered grenades (rifle-fired, fragmentation), shotguns and assorted ammo found, and were these used by the slain men in the course of resisting a search?

…Nothing less than an independent inquiry is needed in this benighted season of death and desolation.

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/120532/14-dead-farmers-why#ixzz6Booxw4aP

THE KILLING FIELDS OF THE PHILIPPINES

See: https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-killing-fields-of-philippines.html

ARE WE STILL A ‘DEMOCRACY’?

By: Richard Heydarian - @inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer / 09:07 AM April 16, 2019

…we still have elections, vivacious and boisterous as ever. As things stand, however, it’s highly likely that the upcoming elections will be the most lopsided in recent memory.

The opposition, desperately short on finances, volunteers and local governments willing to host their campaign events, is struggling to get even a single senator elected.

This not only puts into question the fairness and competitive nature of our elections, which is a minimum prerequisite for procedural democracy, but could also leave the legislature at the mercy of executive prerogative in the coming years.

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/120808/are-we-still-a-democracy#ixzz6BQqg5Qlm

The DND has trashed Malacañang’s Matrix Fantasy. It’s not enough for me. Officials should not be allowed to get away with deliberate spread of lies—and it was all lies and they knew it.

inday espina verona,
@indayeverona
Philippine Daily Inquirer (May 30, 2019)