Massive Corruption and Bad Governance under the Duterte Administration - A Continuing Series



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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