DAPAT maintindihan ng mga Marcos na malalim ang sugat na iniwan ng diktadurya ni Ferdinand Marcos sa sambayanan Filipino. Dapat maintindihan na hindi nila basta maloloko ang sambayanan ng anumang propaganda na magpapabango sa kanilang pangalan at babago sa kasaysayan. Dalawang salinlahi ang sinira ng diktadurya at nakatatak sa kanilang isipan at alala ang masamang ginawa ng kanilang ama.
Pandarambong sa kaban ng bayan na umabot sa bilyon na dolyares, pagkontro ng mga kroni sa kabuhayan ng bansa, at malawakang paglabag sa karapatang pantao – ito ang pamana ng diktadurya ni Marcos sa sambayanan. Hindi ito mapagtakpan ng mga Marcos. Maraming intelektwal ang nabuhay upang maisulat ang mga ito at sabihin sa susunod na henerasyon. Hindi tanga ang mga Filipino upang basta na lang kalimutan ang kawalanghiyaan ng mga Marcos.
Ito ang dahilan upang hindi pumatok sa takilya ang pelikulang huwad na “Maid in Malacanang.” Ito rin ang dahilan tapatan ang kasinulangin ng mga Marcos na matinong pelikula, “Katips.” Kumikita ang Katips. Nilangaw ang Maid. Kailangan nilang mamigay ng tiket upang may manood sa basurang pelikula ni Imee.
***
HALAW ang mga sumusunod sa aming aklat “KILL KILL KILL: EJKs in the Philippines; Crimes Against Humanity vs. Duterte Et. Al. at the ICC.” Nasa huling yugto na ako na pagsusulat.
BY the last quarter of 2016, the Magdalo Party List of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Rep. Gary Alejano, and their legislative staffs worked overtime to find legal ways to stop Rodrigo Duterte from his deadly track to kill Filipino people with impunity and impose his despicable brand of authoritarianism to the people. The Magdalo Party List went into full mobilization. On the one hand, Trillanes took charge of the buildup of crimes against humanity charges against Duterte. It was to be submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC). On the other hand, Alejano worked doubly hard on the impeachment complaint against Duterte. Against all odds, the Magdalo group perceived the twin moves – ICC charges and impeachment complaint – as complementary to each other. While the Trillanes’s crimes against humanity charges could be long-term, Alejano’s impeachment complaint was short-term. Alejano filed it first before Congress but it did not take off to become a victim of vicious political play by the coalition of political forces supporting Duterte. The coalition in power killed it outright.
Trillanes’s colleagues and legislative staff took a punishing grind to solidify the crimes against humanity charges against Duterte and his cohorts. They did extensive researches – topic by topic, provision by provision, and page by page – to examine every available literature on the planned crimes against humanity charges against Duterte and his ilk. They focused their efforts on the provisions of the Rome Statute, the multilateral treaty creating the ICC in 2003. They had to determine the requirements for legal compliance on the planned charges, particularly the issues of jurisdiction, admissibility, and complementarity. This move sought to ensure the ICC would welcome the charges. Their efforts paid off as his group, showing outmost devotion, professionalism, and esprit de corps, had built up a case against Duterte and ilk. They burned the proverbial midnight oil to come out for the first time with charges of international dimension against an incumbent president. Trillanes and his group knew they were facing an unpredictable opponent in Duterte, whom they believed has a criminal mind. Besides, they felt that any charges against Duterte before the ICC could prosper because Duterte’s influence could not reach the ICC.
It was not true that somebody else did the case buildup for the intrepid lawmaker. Credit goes to his legislative staff and the Magdalo Party. The truth was that they built the case with tacit encouragement from the democratic opposition. The case buildup was carried secretly and it did not leak to the Palace. The arrival of lawyer Jude Josue Sabio in Manila on October 5, 2016 from Cagayan de Oro City completed the cast, which worked feverishly on the crimes against humanity charges for submission to the ICC. But Sabio had to represent first Edgar Matobato, the self-confessed assassin of the dreaded Davao Death Squad (DDS) before the right forum. Matobato appeared at the Senate, which conducted, albeit half-heartedly, a probe “in aid of legislation” of the reported extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the country. Sen. Richard Gordon, who was then a Duterte ally, chaired the proceedings of the Senate inquiry on the EJKs.
The inquiry, initiated first by Sen. Leila de Lima in her capacity as the chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, went to determine the EJKs’ extent since Duterte took his oath. Sensing that the inquiry would put not just Duterte but his entire government on the bad light, the fawning Gordon, with help from defeated vice presidential candidate Alan Peter Cayetano, who retained his Senate seat though, high jacked the inquiry by kicking de Lima out as the committee chair. The inquiry in Gordon’s hand zigged and zagged off its mandate to exonerate Duterte of any complicity and responsibility. Gordon besmirched the reputation of the guilt-ridden Matobato, who chose to turn his back on the DDS and reveal everything he knew about the group, his former handlers, and Duterte. He called him a “damaged good.”
NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS. Edgar Matobato, a functionally illiterate self-confessed DDS gunman, has developed traction in the national consciousness, when he emerged in two consecutive weekly public hearings of the Senate inquiry on September 15 and 22, 2016 to reveal publicly the existence of the DDS as an armed group, which Duterte formed way back in 1988, when he was first elected mayor of Davao City. Matobato earlier claimed he was under Duterte’s employ to eliminate people, who were believed to engage in criminal activity. According to Matobato, Duterte “directly led, directed, and participated to kill a number of people,” when he was mayor of Davao City. Although he claimed to have been part of the dreaded DDS, Matobato said he later turned his back on them and claimed to have become disgusted with its ways, especially when the hit squad graduated to kill personal enemies of the Dutertes – father Rodrigo and son Paolo.
Matobato was not the only person to have come out to claim direct participation in the DDS and reveal killing people under Duterte’s order. Shortly after his retirement in 2017, Police Officer Arthur Lascanas revealed publicly that he too worked as a DDS member and issued an affidavit to reveal Duterte’s participation in the hit squad. Lascanas appeared in the Senate inquiry on Oct. 3, 2016, but denied, at first, Matobato’s allegations about the DDS. Four months later, he said he was forced to lie because he wanted to secure his family first from any reprisal by Duterte and his minions, if ever he would speak the truth. On February 19, 2017, Lascanas, in a sudden turnaround, issued a damaging affidavit against Duterte. Lascanas held a press conference to make public his affidavit and corroborate what Matobato earlier said in the Sept. 15 and Sept. 22, 2016 Senate public hearings. Immediately after the press conference, Lascanas, who claimed that his two brothers were killed by the DDS because of their alleged involvement in drugs, disappeared.
The inevitable happened. The testimonies of Matobato and Lascanas were regarded not only revealing but damaging as well by the senators allied with Duterte. Gordon led the pro-Duterte lawmakers to derail the proceedings but not without Gordon’s committee (and his leadership), earning the unpalatable tag of “comite de absuelto” (acquittal committee) from Trillanes The Matobato-Lascanas tandem had provided the one-two punch that confirmed DDS’s official existence as a killing machine in Davao City. They were the insiders, who gave details on the extent of its operations. Their public confessions were part of the opening portion of the information, which the Magdalo, through lawyer Jude Josue Sabio, submitted to the ICC on the 17th of April, 2017.
As originally planned, Trillanes completed the information for submission to the ICC. What his Magdalo colleagues and legislative staff had prepared was reinforced by inputs by Jude Josue Sabio, who was hired as the professional lawyer to represent not only the Matobato-Lascanas team, but the Magdalo as well. The information Sabio submitted to the ICC was the first to have come from the Philippines since the ICC’s existence in 2003. It contained crimes against humanity charges against Rodrigo Duterte and 11 henchmen, who allegedly participated in the bloody but failed antidrug war. The information aptly pointed to “mass murder” as the focal point of the charges of crimes against humanity against Duterte and his henchmen.
Moreover, it narrated that the mass murder was not just mere random acts of violence against certain persons, but a state policy (or” state-sponsored’) led and directed by Duterte himself. Aside from Duterte, the information included then Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre; then Philippine National Police Director General Ronaldo dela Rosa (now a senator); then House of Representatives Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez; and then Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno. It included Solicitor General Jose Calida, Senators Richard Gordon and Alan Peter Cayetano, Police Superintendent Edilberto Leonardo, Senior Police Officer 4 Sanson “Sonny” Buenaventura, Police Superintendent Royina Garma (who later became head of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office), and National Bureau of Investigation Director Dante Gierran (who later became head of PhilHealth).
The post LALIM NG SUGAT appeared first on Police Files! Tonite.
Source: Police Files Tonite
Walang komento: