By Diego Morra
Something completely bad is happening to the country’s judicial system, particularly after the unlamented ex-president Rodrigo Duterte launched his bloody “anti-drug war” in 2016 and unleashed his total war against people’s organizations and progressive party-lists two years later through the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) through Executive Order No. 70 (Dec. 4, 2028) and his reinforced military-police campaign against suspected New People’s Army (NPA) mass bases via Memorandum Circular No. 32 (Nov. 22, 2018).
It is within this context that Duterte ordered the closure of all Lumad-operated schools in Mindanao after years of tolerance by the Department of Education (DepEd), which had been unable to establish schools in remote indigenous communities. Duterte’s daughter, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, whose vice- presidential campaign was exposed to be funded by Chinese-operated Philippine overseas gaming operations (POGOs) and drug kingpins as Ramil Madriaga claimed, reportedly completed less than two dozen classrooms before she thankfully resigned as education chief.
Both father and daughter are viscerally anti-communist, particularly after revolutionaries refused to be used by the Davao political dynasty to expand their political bailiwicks and support their cleansing operations against political enemies, members of street corner gangs and even minors as young as 7 for being “thieves” before they even knew what stealing meant. The Dutertes surely acted like monarchs who exercised the “divine right” to choose who should and who must die. In the case of the purported “anti-drug war,” the now disappeared Sen. Ronald de la Rosa affirmed that the elder Duterte had been dispensing cash for cops, and even tagged his fellow Duterte minion Sen. Christopher Lawrence Tesoro Go as the distributor of rewards.
Publicly, before the autumn of the Duterte patriarch commenced, he roared that he would be “personally responsible” for what the implementors of the anti-drug crackdown were doing, only to later abandon his foot soldiers, including the policemen who murdered Kian de los Santos and executed a minor and UP student on leave who were snatched in Cainta, Rizal. This is a classic case of obedient lawmen following his orders and getting thrown under the bus. In short, they were fooled, or in street lingo “nabudol.” Indeed, the Dutertes have doctoral degrees in manipulation, deception and the private appropriation of the national wealth even as they have, since 2016, exercised undue influence on the judiciary.
The Talaingod case is illustrative of injustice committed against the very defenders of indigenous children’s right to education. After the elder Duterte ordered the dismantling of schools operated by indigenous groups in Mindanao, the military and police, with the support of DepEd, threatened to burn down those schools, tagging their officials and teachers as NPA supporters. In 2018, frantic calls were made by 11 teachers and 16 students in one such school as armed men said to belong to a paramilitary group backed by the Philippine Army (PA) threatened to burn down their school and dormitory. Clearly, the abuse was committed by these armed men, not by former ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro and former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo and 16 others who launched an immediate rescue mission.
The mission was harassed, the vans they used hit by spikes thrown along the route by the same group that threatened the indigenous pupils and their teachers. Mission members led by Ocampo and Castro were later arrested and charged preposterously with child trafficking, kidnapping and child abuse. In July 2024, the Tagum City Regional Trial Court convicted the Talaingod 18 for “child abuse” as the kidnapping and trafficking cases were dropped as they have weak judicial legs to stand on. Lawyers for the defense were stumped by the judgment after they argued that there was not a single case of abused committed against the children. Indeed, it was a rescue mission consistent with international humanitarian law and all covenants respecting the rights of children.
Now, the shoe is on the other foot. The rescuers became the villain and prosecutors naturally could not contest the fact that no child was harmed during the entire period they were in the company of Castro, Ocampo, the pastors and teachers. That several of the accused were acquitted should be a cause for judicial dilemma for the Court of Appeals (CA) that affirmed a flawed decision. Indeed, observers found out that the defense was not accorded the opportunity to argue their case profoundly since the trial was not a matter of summary proceedings or expedited procedures. For this alone, due process was not rendered, with the court agreeing to the military claim that by rescuing the children, the Talaingod 18 exposed them to danger, invoking a facile reading of Republic Act No. 7610 to justify a weird decision.
The CA decision immediately earned brickbats from the human rights community for the ruling hewed exactly to what the Dutertes wanted at a time when Dutertes themselves are facing myriad criminal cases for plunder, graft and corruption, bribery, crimes against humanity and mass murder. The tribunal has failed in its assignment to render impartial justice, years after the Duterte patriarch threatened to rewrite the book that justices should follow. “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When people fear the government, there is tyranny,” Thomas Jefferson wrote. Yet, Duterte’s tyranny has lost its sting but the courts, out of habit perhaps, may still believe that he still has a franchise over the law. It is but just for the Supreme Court (SC) to assess the CA decision and just shred it once and for all. It doesn’t do justice to an institution that has already been criticized for its judgment in the Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio impeachment case. #
