I WAS busy yesterday and did not have time to sit through nine hours of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s appearance before the quad committee of the House of Representatives. They are a more vile lot than the ones he faced at the Senate, where only Sen. Risa Hontiveros bared her fangs at the foul-mouthed ex-president. I watched around an hour’s worth of footage on YouTube, and boy, that was the best show in town that day.
He was not a stupid lawyer. He claimed to have gotten a grade of 70 in many of his subjects in law school, mainly “because I kept on getting into fights with other students,” he said in one interview. He also received a similar grade at the bar exams. But 70 is a passing grade and something not to be sneezed at, considering how difficult law school and the bar exams are.
So, you have the spectacle of Rep. Gerville Luistro in a big blue silk dress, her ears, neck and fingers festooned with earrings, necklace and several twinkling rings, grilling Duterte as if he were a law student. You have to give it to Representative Luistro for sheer preparation. On point, sharp and relentless, her line of questioning built up one “conclusion” that allegedly, the former president was the brains behind the drug war that killed from 7,000 to 30,000 Filipinos during his bloody regime.
It might just be me, but I was a bit bothered by Representative Luistro’s mistakes with the use of prepositions (“for” instead of “to”) and her omission of the definite article “the” in her speeches. I am an old-fashioned English teacher who also finished three years of law school, so you may forgive me for this nitpicking.
Unlike in the Senate hearing, Duterte did not curse, this time, thank God, for children and people below 18 also watched the proceedings. He only lost his cool twice. First, after former senator Antonio Trillanes IV presented a well-researched and detailed PowerPoint on the alleged stash of Duterte and his family during their many years in power. Billions of pesos, my dear. Duterte said: “If any of these allegations are true, I will resign.” Silence. He forgot he was no longer president.
Then he added: “All the members of my family will also resign from their posts if these allegations are proven true — in court. And I will hang myself in front of you.”
Trillanes shot back. “We have been here before. Duterte will issue a dramatic statement that he will sign a bank waiver, and then he will forget about it.”
Someone said that perhaps they could draw up a bank waiver at that moment, pronto, and the former president could sign it?
Duterte lost his cool and threatened to throw the microphone at Trillanes, who later quipped: “It’s all right if he throws a mike at me, or even slaps me, as long as he signs a bank waiver.”
Duterte also ignored the name and the presence of former justice secretary and senator Leila de Lima, who was allegedly framed for drug-related charges and imprisoned for five years during his presidency. De Lima revived the testimony of Arturo Lascañas, who said he was a member of the Davao death squad. Duterte tossed the allegations aside, and said that Lascañas was “a lunatic liar.” At one point, he threatened to hit de Lima, who sat beside him and glared at him. Duterte said the same description of Lascañas to Luistro when she tried to link him to a spate of killings in Davao.
Throughout it all, Vice President Sara Duterte sat bemused in the gallery. Her eyes only flickered when Trillanes showed a PowerPoint slide upon slide of their family’s alleged loot, including that of Sara when she was the mayor of Davao City. It all amounted to billions. Sara’s mouth went slightly agape and her eyes flamed. I am not saying it was from guilt or any other feeling. I am just describing the image captured by the cold camera of the television screen.
When asked if he had killed people, the former president was unrepentant. “Ako? (Me?) A lot. Six or seven people.” They included four Chinese men who were caught in a raid in a drug den in Davao City. He also claimed to have killed two to three policemen who were involved in a ransom kidnapping and rape. He himself killed them, in a cold-blooded exaction of his notion of justice.
“Apat na Chinese, pinatay ko talaga … Marami akong pinatay na pulis sa Davao, dahil mga kriminal sila… ako mismo ang talagang humirit… mga pulis ito na gago, na nang-kidnap at nang-rape.”
When the Protestant pastor and Manila congressman Benny Abante asked if he was still on a murderous rampage, Duterte demurred: “No more, sir, I am already retired.” This drew laughter from the usually tension-filled hearing.
What is the upshot of this? Slippery as an eel, Duterte mostly did not go into specifics, except for the killing of the Chinese and the rogue cops. In today’s papers, the headline screamed that the Philippines won’t stop a possible arrest of Duterte by the Interpol — if that is how his challenge to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to have him investigated would end up. These words came from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Clear as a mountain stream.
Affirming a statement from Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, Marcos said that while the Duterte administration withdrew the Philippines from the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, the country is “still bound by its commitments to the Interpol.”
The Department of Justice also chimed in. “Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla has repeatedly said that despite the withdrawal of the Philippines from the Rome Statute, the country remains a member country of the Interpol.”
Smart, skilled and highly organized, will the Interpol finally catch the slippery Duterte and bring him behind bars? Let’s wait for the next chapter.
Abangan and susunod na kabanata.
Danton Remoto’s books, “Riverrun, A Novel” and “The Heart of Summer: Stories and Tales,” have been published by Penguin SEA. They are on sale at Fully Booked online and www.acrephils.com.
