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Prez Digong has declared five high police officials guilty. They are still very much around though which is not what happens to poor, obscure and powerless suspects.
Do we still probe and have a trial as part of due process? Useless, it seems to me.
Which prober, prosecutor or trial judge would contradict or embarrass the President? May the Supreme Court, which he may soon pack with his choices?
He should just let makuwento PNP chief Bato de la Rosa, and prudent Executive Secretary Bingbong Medialdea, Justice Secretary Vit Aguirre and Communications head honcho Martin Andanar do the talking and make pronouncements such as he just imprudently made, if at all. For distance and deniability. Yes, if at all, they should pass judgment and ignore the presumption of innocence in our Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
When US President Richard Nixon said, on August 4, 1970, in Denver, that Charles Manson and company were guilty of murdering actress Sharon Tate and company, there was an outcry from the accused, the American bar and the media.
Press Secretary Ron Ziegler fell all over himself to say that Nixon had failed to use "allegedly" and retracted for the president.
I am waiting for the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, the Commission on Human Rights and concerned lawyers and law groups (such as FLAG, the Philippine Bar association, Philconsa, National Union of People's Lawyers, etc.), to state whether we just let the President pass judgment on anyone's guilt and abolish in effect the investigation and prosecution services and the judiciary.
No more trials in cases Prez Digong openly, blatantly, unfairly and unconstitutionally prejudges.
Digong is beginning to sound more and more like Marcos, who repeatedly announced as guilty many political adversaries. And in fact, he had them jailed, even without charges, such as Ka Pepe Diokno. At least Ninoy was charged, and in the end extrajudicially executed.
Our laws guarantee equal protection. Part of the presidential oath is "to do justice to every man." No suspect is a lower form of life.
What would be left of the rule of law by yearend?
Of course we all hope for the President to succeed.
A shame campaign is not the way to do it, with all due respect.
Change has come? Transformation, not Transmogrification. Metamorphosis, not metastasis.
Decay has come?
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