The ‘defining moment’ of PBBM’s presidency

IT HAS been a week since the “arrest” at the NAIA of former President Rodrigo Duterte– “kidnapping” by way of “extra-judicial rendition” — according to his family and his former executive secretary, Salvador Medialdea.

Since then, details surrounding the incident are coming out that has put into the category of an “official lie” the government’s narrative that what happened is the country’s way of “honoring” our international obligations and commitments, in particular, with the International Police Organization (Interpol), which supposedly “requested” for the arrest and deportation of Pres. Duterte to The Hague, headquarters of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Up to now, who has seen the ‘Red Notice,’ the Interpol’s “alert notice” (NOT arrest warrant) to the government on behalf of the ICC? Anyone?

It is also only now we learn that when President Duterte was “arrested,” the government does not have the actual or physical copy of the warrant that was reportedly issued by the ICC last March 7, but which it also questionably withheld from the public.

As the ICC admitted, the warrant was only seen by Pres. Duterte after he was turned over to its jurisdiction on his arrival at The Hague from a very long trip on board a private plane that, we now also learn, was chartered by some of our own officials!

The undeniable conclusion is that our own government used its awesome power to facilitate the deportation of one of its citizens to the custody and mercy of a foreign court.

People are asking: If, for the sake of political expediency and political ambition, our authorities are willing to bend and discard the rule of law not against law breakers but against all their political enemies, real and imagined, who might the next victim be?

For no matter how the government insists that no politics was involved in the arrest of President Duterte, no one believes it. Do you, dear readers?

Heck, even the most rabid, pro-Western, mainstream media never failed to mention PBBM’s antagonism against his predecessor in their reportage, describing the detention and deportation of President Duterte as “political revenge” on PBBM’s part.

And will this be the “new normal” now? That anyone among us can be arrested with the warrant “to follow later” and over a case that violated the rules on due process and of jurisdiction?

This is a very dangerous precedent, dear readers. If the government can now do whatever it wants, interpret the rule of law the way it wants against all threats to the stability and continuity of an administration that has a huge problem on the issue of misgovernance, who is safe, really?

We are sure that in the end, PBBM wants to leave a better legacy than what his father, President Marcos Senior, left behind.

He certainly is not—and does not want to be—a “dictator.”

However, the blatant violation of Pres. Duterte’s civil, human, and political rights and his swift delivery into the hands of a foreign court that has no jurisdiction over us is a traumatic experience that has seared the Filipino “psyche.”

“Tumatak” na ito sa isipan ng lahat ng Pilipino.

How sad that while PBBM is only at the midpoint of his term, this one incident would be its defining moment when the time comes for history to be written.