Exposing the daftness of the highest paid international lawyer defending the former and now detained president, Nicholas Kaufman who is reportedly a British-Israeli barrister by positing to limit the participants from the victims of his self-confessed client. In an effort to keep the surviving families of the bloody war on drugs that his client admittedly ordered if not masterminded, he raised the tactic of silencing the agonizing cries of the families left orphaned by the innocent victims of the bloody war on drugs. The weird idea is to purportedly simplify the proceedings by excluding family members of those innocent victims who could not present a valid identification card.
The proposal was immediately met with objections from the affected families and legal minds who care for the affected families. The main opposition was grounded on the fact that most of the victims’ families have no identification cards considering that the belong to the poorest of the poor. He mayhap not been informed by his high-profile client that government identification cards had not been issued to many poor citizens considering the cost of getting one and the fact that they seldom need such cards. It is impractical for a poor citizen to get an identification card when all their life are spent working in the fields, not even needing to go to town centers to buy for their daily needs.
The news in national broadsheets about a Filipino international lawyer accredited by the International Criminal Court (ICC) by giving the high-priced international lawyer of the former and now detained president a free lecture on realities in the country’s social and cultural situation is commendable. It explicated the situation in the country where the poorest of the poor opt rice than any identification card which has no use in buying items in the market. Indeed, why would one bother spending time and money to procure an identification card. For people living in the lowest economic strata, food is the be all and end all for the family.
Limiting the participants from the surviving families of the is a desperate strategy the defense lawyer of the former and now detained president can raise at the moment. It would bring the to fore the utter failure of his high-profile client. It is well to remind the highly-paid international lawyer that Republic Act No. 11055, or the Philippine Identification System Act, was signed by former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte on 06 August 2018.
That national identification card may not have reached the poorest of the poor for reasons only the recipients can explain. With much more reason that the other identification documents such as driver’s license, passport or unified multi-purpose identification (UMID) can the survivors of the victims of the bloody drug war could not have. The highly-paid international lawyer badly needs ayde.
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