`From the start of the investigation, we already saw signs of its being just for show… although we had our doubts. But now that the President has spoken, well, all doubts have vanished.’
FOR a while there, Filipinos who are seriously interested in the human rights aspects of President Duterte’s war on illegal drugs have seen some slivers of hope when the Department of Justice and the Philippine National Police (PNP) expressed support and cooperation in the ongoing investigation of the police’s anti-illegal drugs operations.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra has asked Interior Secretary Eduardo Año and PNP chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar for all records pertaining to the police operations, and Eleazar readily agreed.
But then, the damper came the other day when President Duterte issued a pronouncement that clearly has the effect of countermanding any transparent investigation of the anti-drug operations, including the much-publicized and controversial extrajudicial killings.
In his televised Talk of the People, the Chief Executive made it clear that in these operations, there are documents that may be shown to the public at large and anybody who is interested may get them, but there are also confidential documents that are best treated as confidential or official secrets.
“We can’t give everything. You can go into a query of how the battle was fought, how the gunfire started, but what prompted the police or military to go into this operation based on their reports and collated dossier, you can’t meddle with that,” said the President.
Guevarra and Eleazar, being the President’s alter ego and subordinates, will have to follow the policy guidance coming directly from the President’s mouth, or they risk the loss of their jobs. That is just the way it is. The sad thing now is that Secretary Guevarra’s praise for Eleazar’s decision to cooperate as a “very significant milestone in the government’s effort to exact accountability” will turn from a stone to just a grain of sand.
Suddenly, we are back to where we started in this probe, and critics like Edre Olalia, president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, will gain new adherents in their camp, convinced that the President’s pronouncement is “practically a marching order that effectively countermands the subsequent afterthought of a purported ‘openness’ of the PNP to have access to all files.”
From the start of the investigation, we already saw signs of its being just for show, to appease international critics, although we had our doubts. But now that the President has spoken, well, all doubts have vanished.
