COLUMN: OPINION ON PAGE ONE- The DU30 death squads / By Francisco S. Tatad

DURING the US Prohibition era, the Feds could not bring down Al Capone, Chicago’s “Public Enemy No. 1,” for the Valentine’s Day massacre and other murders, so they prosecuted him for tax evasion. He was convicted and jailed for 11 years, got sick and died not much later. “What lesson can we learn from this?” my 16-year-old US-based grandson Raf asked his 14-year-old brother Matt during a parlor game. “Pay your taxes before you start killing people,” Matt answered with quick wit. This brought the house down.

.

ADS by Cloud 9:
.
– SPACE RESERVE FOR YOUR ADVERTISEMENT –
.

.

Rappler on the block
It seems the Department of Justice has decided to take a leaf from Al Capone’s saga when it filed tax evasion charges against Rappler, the online media platform, and Maria Ressa, its executive officer. The Duterte government has been trying to overcome Ressa and Rappler’s fiercely independent reporting, by questioning the legality of their corporate funding. This has gotten the government nowhere. Apparently the government hopes to do better on its tax evasion charges, which carry a fine and a prison sentence.

If found guilty, Ressa could serve time and, for the duration, be physically prevented from functioning as a journalist and as Rappler’s executive officer. This could mean one major source of critical reporting and analyses less for the administration. But it’s too early to tell. DU30’s problems with the media arise not so much from the fact that he has more critics than paid or principled defenders, as the fact that he does not have a good narrative to tell.

He tends to shoot from the hip instead of dealing with issues on the basis of facts and reason. He has made himself his own irrepressible spokesman, and allowed someone like Salvador Panelo to share the honor. And he has allowed the Philippine National Police (PNP) to get involved in the handling of media affairs. That has not helped either.

The case vs ABS-CBN
I refer to Interior Secretary Eduardo Año’s and PNP Chief Oscar Albayalde’s recent tangle with ABS-CBN and the producers of the widely popular “Ang Probinsyano” teleseries on what it should and should not contain. For a while the PNP suspended its logistical support for the series, while Año, who has administrative supervision of the PNP, threatened to sue its producers and ABS-CBN, if they did not change its plot and storyline which, according to him, cast the police in a bad light, and was destructive of their morale.

 

 

.

Ang Probinsyano is based on a 1997 blockbuster by the late “movie king” Fernando Poe Jr., who nearly became president in 2004; it has been airing on ABS-CBN since 2015. It portrays the adventures of an honest and hardworking policeman, Senior Police Officer 2 Cardo Dalisay, played by actor Coco Martin, against the venal forces within and outside the fictional national police organization.

Dalisay has to contend with a corrupt chief of police and corrupt politicians. Anyone who has followed the series should have known that the good guy in the story is a policeman, even though the bad guys are also policemen and corrupt politicians. And it is the good guy who wins.

An imagined coup
Some have suggested that Año’s and the PNP chief’s adverse reaction might have been provoked by an episode in which the fictional PNP chief conspires with the fictional vice president to overthrow the fictional president. It is a political scenario that could actually happen here, thus, the sharp reaction. But it is pure fiction.

In the US, many films have taken the liberty of portraying fictional attempts to take down the president in order to install somebody else, including a foreign power. For instance, in the movie “Olympus Has Fallen,” the White House is taken over by armed North Korean terrorists, the president is taken hostage, and only a US secret service officer is left to save the president. None of these films have provoked the slightest protest from the government, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, or the police who are not always portrayed in the best light.

In one recent film (“Hunter Killer”), hypothetical US Navy seals rescue the fictional Russian president after he has been captured by the Russian defense minister in a military coup intended to set the stage for launching a nuclear war. No one in Russia has denounced the American filmmaker’s attempt to plant treasonous ideas in the minds of Russian military officials. And not even Hillary Clinton has denounced the ungodly idea of the US Navy risking the lives of its men to rescue a captured Russian president, whose hackers in real life reportedly interfered in the last US presidential elections.

.

Año’s threat to sue ABS-CBN and the producers of Ang Probinsyano and the PNP’s withdrawal of logistical support from the series drew sharp reactions from the public, including the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP), which denounced the attempt to intervene and dictate the narrative in favor of the PNP as “tantamount to censorship and suppression of creative freedom.” It sends “a chilling message to all TV producers, writers and directors,” the group said.

.

ADS by Cloud 9:
.
– SPACE RESERVE FOR YOUR ADVERTISEMENT –
.

.

Año’s U-turn
It is to Año’s and Albayalde’s credit that they finally took a u-turn, and reaffirmed support for the teleseries, which has become a regular Monday to Friday evening fare for countless Filipino televiewers.

So long as the portrayal is purely fictitious, no matter how negative it may look, no drama series should be able to destroy the PNP’s morale, reputation and prestige. The actual conduct of its officers and men, if it shines, would belie any negative film characterization of it. But the officers and men should make sure that no slander or false rumor against them goes unanswered, and that nothing dark in their past follows them in their present assignments. Año and Albayalde should take the lead in this.

For example, in Albayalde’s last posting as provincial police director of Pampanga, his men were reported to have seized a big shipment of drugs, estimated at not less than 300 kilograms. However, the post-operation report, according to anti-drug intel sources, acknowledged only 36.681 kg. The discrepancy was reportedly recycled by the team that had seized it. This was reportedly investigated by then-CIDG director Benjie Magalong, who recommended dismissal from the service of all those involved. But the “dismissal” was reportedly downgraded to mere “suspension,” allegedly upon the intervention of the provincial police director.

I have heard positive things about Albayalde, and I find this hard to believe; but I am in no position to say it is “fake news.” It is best that he clarifies this matter before it ends up as a fictional episode in the tele-series.

Decriminalizing the death squads
Most of DU30’s problems are self-inflicted. To his many such injuries, his latest addition takes the cake: the “Duterte death squads” against the New People’s Army (NPA), with whom the Armed Forces of the Philippines is still engaged in an armed conflict. What does this mean? The creation of a “death squad,” whatever its target, can only be the act of a crime boss, never that of a constitutionally elected president of a democratic and republican State.

What will DU30’s death squad do? Assassinate suspected NPA members, without recourse to the just rules of war, as governed by international conventions and treaties? It doesn’t make any sense.

DU30 has gone to great lengths to deny accusations that as Davao City mayor, he had organized the “Davao death squad” to eliminate his enemies and that the DDS had killed thousands. Lawyer Jude Sabio, supplemented by party-list Rep. Gary Alejano, has filed a “communication” before the International Criminal Court at The Hague accusing him of “crimes against humanity” for the alleged murders committed by this DDS. DU30 has responded by announcing his withdrawal from the Statute of Rome, which created the ICC, although there is no sign the ICC will give him a free pass.

He has called God “stupid” for the bishops and priests who have denounced the extrajudicial drug killings, savaged every dignitary who ever showed an interest in the same. And now this. Has he come to believe that by announcing, matter-of-factly, that he has created the “Duterte death squads” for the NPA, he has thereby legalized what was illegal, monstrous and murderous, and freed himself from any responsibility for all the DDS murders and those that had been committed and will yet be committed by his anti-drug police and so-called vigilantes? Where is the law in all this? Isn’t it time for the ordinary law enforcement officer to take a stand and say, “we cannot obey an illegal order, Mr. President.”

[email protected]

It's only fair to share...