A SIGNATURE campaign demanding that former President Rodrigo Duterte, who is now detained at the International Criminal Court (ICC) detention center in The Hague, Netherlands, be brought home is now in place. The campaign was launched the other day in Davao City, the former President’s turf.
We understand very well the intention of the organizers of the campaign. After all, who will not do such an initiative, especially since the person sought to be brought home is one of their own?
The question, however, is how much weight does it carry to influence those who are being addressed in the demand?
It is our personal take that when the former President was whisked to the Netherlands and turned over to the ICC, the Philippine government sort of surrendered its jurisdiction over the person of the former chief of state.
And even assuming that the Philippine authorities will be ordered by the country’s highest court to bring back the former Philippine leader, how is the government expected to carry out the order? Will it ask the private complainants to withdraw the crime against humanity case they filed against Duterte? And will the complainants agree?
So far, the defense team of the former President has not succeeded in all its efforts to have the detained former President released, even on an interim basis. In fact, the Duterte lawyers have again filed a petition to have him released, arguing that he has “serious deterioration in both his physical and cognitive health.”
So far, the ICC’s Pre-trial Chamber has yet to rule on the petition.
We can only hope that the signature drive that is reported to be snowballing can help influence the members of the ICC Pre-trial Chamber to rule in favor of the petitioner.
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Well, now, Congressman Paolo “Polong” Duterte, in a statement released in the media the other day, said that his father, who is detained in The Hague, is not planning to come back to the Philippines for as long as the President is still Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr.
Perhaps the Congressman is positive that the Petition for temporary release filed by his father’s Counsel will be acted upon in favor of the accused former President.
In other words, if the former leader is lucky and gets a temporary liberty, he will still be waiting for another three years before he can comfortably return to the Philippines. But perhaps he may be more fortunate if those anti-administration people succeed in driving Marcos, Jr. out of the country. He can come back much sooner.
We, however, do not believe that the elder Duterte’s manifest decision not to go home is any sign of fear, much less cowardice, to the incumbent President and the possibility of the latter doing more harm against his predecessor.
With what Congressman Polong has said, we believe that the former Philippine leader is not yet ready to do a Ninoy Aquino.
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Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian has vowed to keep politicians out of government aid payouts.
Really? Yes, Gatchalian may be serious in his intention to keep the various assistance programs of the government from being taken advantage of by politicians in their efforts to build their names and to make beneficiaries feel they have some kind of “debts of gratitude” to politicians identified with the government’s various cash or in-kind assistance.
But will the secretary be able to get a handle on his agency’s regional and local government offices? And even if some kind of mechanism is provided to have such an intention implemented, it is common experience that politicians, especially the Congressmen aligned with the national administration, are even the ones determining the schedule and places of the payouts.
Even the beneficiaries of the aid are subject to the determination of politicians.
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We suffered for more than 24 hours without water, starting last Monday morning until about 10 a.m. yesterday. There was no advisory from the DCWD.
Of course, we can understand that for utility services like water distribution, outages can always happen without prior knowledge of the utility firm. However, we cannot help but be mad about the water service interruption last Monday until yesterday mid-morning.
There was no effort at all from the water firm to even make any explanation while the outage was ongoing. In fact, when we called the agency’s information unit, no one seemed aware that there was an ongoing service interruption. Why are there walls separating the different divisions or units at the DCWD, so that some are not aware of what is happening in the firm’s service delivery?
Anyhow, we still would like to congratulate the water district for the two awards they got recently from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
We hope that the surveys will inspire the firm to further improve its services, including its information dissemination process, for the consumers.
