BAD GOVERNANCE UNDER THE DUTERTE ADMINISTRATION
LAWYERS
IN THE CROSSHAIRS
Philippine
Daily Inquirer / 04:35 AM March 04, 2020
For
many Filipino lawyers, these are the worst of times to practice law in the
Philippines.
On
the night of Feb. 28, a lone gunman barged into the office of prominent 73-year-old
lawyer Bayani Dalangin and shot him in front of his clients. Dalangin,
described as “a good, brilliant and respected Ecijano lawyer,” was rushed to
the Talavera General Hospital but was declared dead on arrival.
Just
nine days earlier, on Feb. 19, Fredric Santos, the suspended legal chief of the
Bureau of Corrections, who testified in the Senate hearings on the GCTA (good
conduct time allowance)-for-sale scandal, was gunned down in broad daylight by
two assailants as he was waiting in his car for his daughter to come out of her
school in Muntinlupa City. He died on the spot.
And
so, they became the 47th and 48th lawyers killed since the start of the Duterte
administration in 2016. Not a single
conviction has resulted from these killings, and this has rightly raised
the alarm bells of human rights and lawyers associations, who have condemned
the increasing number of violent attacks against lawyers and the worsening
climate of impunity in the country that has undermined the proper functioning
of the country’s justice system.
…L4L
noted how Benjamin Ramos, a founding member of the National Union of People’s
Lawyers and lawyer for the families of nine slain sugarcane farmers in Sagay,
Negros Occidental, was red-tagged in a poster released by the Philippine police
in April 2018. He was shot dead by riding-tandem assailants a few months later,
in November.
Has
the Duterte administration been moved to action? There is little assurance that
the grim situation will improve anytime soon.
The
mounting number of lawyers murdered with impunity under the Duterte
administration and the absence of responsive, effective government action to
bring the perpetrators to justice—and to thereby deter the advance of this murderous blight—directly
degrades the proper working of the police and justice systems. Evidence that
governance is not only bad but also worsening consists in the unacceptable
levels of politically motivated violence in which lawyers are especially targeted,
the appalling government indifference to pursue the criminals responsible, and—what
else are we supposed to expect?—the resulting degradation of the rule of law.
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