Duterte Unto Others

 

DUTERTE UNTO OTHERS

“President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday said his government had nothing to do with the killing of Los Banos, Laguna Mayor Caesar Perez even if his name appeared on the list of narco-politicians.”—GMA News Online (December 8, 2020)

Words matter, especially when you are the head of the executive branch of a country. When you publicly accuse persons of crimes and call for their executions, you violate due process, and in an environment in which your call for their executions is actually implemented in extrajudicial killings and assassinations, you aid and abet by your words their murders. You are directly responsible for their murders. Your responsibility as head of the executive branch of a country is to promote and implement law and order, not to violate and weaken it. You are supposed to investigate and prosecute extrajudicial killings and assassinations and to actively work to diminish them, not to wash your hands of responsibility. Why is there a decades-long record of unsolved crimes of assassination of your political enemies, including those you have publicly targeted for elimination?