The challenge that former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte that he repeatedly spewed before the investigating committees of both the senate and the house of representatives, that he had been killing people but no case has yet been filed by the government, had reportedly been accepted. No less than the justice secretary had issued the statement that an investigation is being conducted to gather evidence and determine if there is enough basis to file the charges. Coordination had also been initiated with the international criminal court to ensure that there will be no overlapping in the prosecution of cases. It was clarified that the government will take the lead and the international criminal court will provide a secondary role.
This development is aimed to satisfy the former president’s wish to bring on the prosecution which he had been waiting for so long, else, he might die before the charges could even start, taunting the government for its inaction against him. So much information and evidence had been gathered by the congressional investigation where the former president gave details of his bloody war on drugs, justifying his style as within the ambit of the constitution and the law. He kept on bragging that as a lawyer and former prosecutor, he did it right when he was mayor and later as president. He too had taught aspiring policemen in the police academy and emphasized the right to shoot when the policeman’s officer is in danger from a potential criminal who was instigated to fight,
Any law student worth his salt would know that such strategy is unlawful as the fundamental requirement to raise self-defense is that the one invoking it mush not have provoked the aggressor. Basic too is the fact that the policeman under threat is not a judge to declare that the aggressor must be killed. Such act is tantamount to disregarding the constitutional presumption of innocence, the person’s right to due process. The policeman’s act of killing the potential aggressor sans any clear overt act to put his life in danger places the policeman as a judge that condemns even before trial. So strict is the requirement of the law that the elements of self-defense must fall foursquare, elsewise, the killing would fall as murder of a helpless victim.
Unfortunately, the killings during the former president’s term were recorded about six thousand cold bodies but human rights groups peg the number at over twenty thousand. The bloody drug was had caught the attention of the international criminal court, giving impetus for it to initiate investigation, albeit met with strong opposition of the former president who vowed to exert all of his powers to stop the investigation and prosecution. Victims suffered in silence for fear of reprisal and further sufferings at the hands of the former president’s minions whose stance was that they are merely following the orders of the former president. Of the large number of victims, not one could be tagged as among the big fishes in the drug trade.
It would be recalled how the former president cleared those involved in the shipment of drugs that were nabbed by the national bureau of investigation. It resulted in the resignation of the director who stood by his men and the tried and tested multi-awarded police dog that found the drugs inside large containers. All these are out of his hokum.
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