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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Kids

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Yesterday’s headlines were all about the President’s daring the Chief Justice and the Ombudsman to resign together with him, then spill the beans about their respective bank accounts. It’s not difficult to get Duterte’s dander up, as we know by now. The IBP president even went so far as to call him “onion-skinned,” which naturally added fuel to the flames.

Of course the opposition jumped on his remarks as yet another proof that Duterte is actually a billionaire (albeit only in peso terms, apparently). Why else, after all, would he be so touchy about people poking into his personal finances?

However, the truth lies somewhere else. Let’s look at the self-evident facts, and then you, dear reader, can figure out how thick your skin would have to be to stay calm and cool if you were in the President’s shoes:

It’s a fact that the Anti-Money Laundering Council has denied sending Duterte’s bank records to the Ombudsman. The denial is reportedly even posted on their website. But Deputy Ombudsman Arturo Carandang insists that the Council did send him those records. Should we believe a cousin of PNot’s trollmaster Ricky Carandang, or the governor of the Bangko Sentral who chairs the AMLC?

· The AMLC also rejected the Ombudsman’s method of calculating Duterte’s “hidden wealth,” which was simply to add up all transactions in his bank accounts, whether debit or credit. If you for whatever reason deposit and then withdraw the same one thousand pesos from your bank five times in a month, you’d be accused of hiding ten thousand pesos of wealth. This is the same tack the Ombudsman used years ago to help bring down the late Chief Justice Corona. Would your accounting teacher give you a passing grade on this?

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· Ask any experienced lawyer if he’s ever heard of cases being “fixed” at the Ombudsman’s office, including under the current Ombudsman. If the answer is no, would you consider him knowledgeable enough to handle your legal affairs?

· That paragon of yellow uprightness, PNot Aquino, also declared he was “at war” with the Ombudsman, and also refused to sign a waiver to disclose his own bank accounts, when he was in the Palace. Sauce for the goose…?

So…if you dear reader were being hounded by characters like these with arguments like those, how long would you be able to maintain your composure?

***

Something called the Philippine Universal Period Review Watch has crawled out from under its rock to ask the UN Human Rights Commission to kick the Philippines out of the HRC because of the “continued killings of drug suspects”. The group was apparently incensed that the HRC had unanimously accepted the country’s latest human rights report.

Not only that. This new group also had the gall to call for the termination of any financial or logistical support being extended by other countries to the AFP and the PNP. That kind of talk borders on treasonous, especially in light of our current security problems with drugs, terrorists, common criminality, and the West Philippine Sea.

This group was described as “a delegation of human rights and religious leaders”, led by something called the National Union of People’s Lawyers, which sounds suspiciously like one of those NDF front organizations. If this is indeed what they are, you have to ask yourself:

Wouldn’t the weakening of our soldiers and policemen be convenient indeed for people affiliated with a “terrorist movement” (not our label, but the European Court of Justice’s) who’re committed to killing those same men and women in uniform?

***

With Duterte, at 72, well into his dotage, he might perhaps be forgiven for becoming a little squishy when the talk turns to children. With my own first grandchild already three months in his/her mother’s womb, I know I’m starting to feel the same sentimentality myself.

This hormonal change in seniors might explain his joke the other week that Presidential daughter Inday Sara would be his choice to succeed him in the Palace, just as she’s already replaced him in the Davao mayor’s office. Luckily for him, the negative reaction so far has been confined to the typically humorless leftists. Besides, the feisty young lady does merit a serious look at her political prospects, regardless of whose daughter she is.

Somewhat more controversial, though, were Duterte’s later remarks about the two Marcos children in politics, former Senator Bongbong and current Governor Imee, who he said shouldn’t be held responsible for the sins of their father.

That ticked off the likable curmudgeon Congressman Edcel Lagman, who harrumphed that the two young Marcoses were “culpable beneficiaries” of the family’s wealth, and that they in fact had come of age shortly after the 1972 declaration of martial law.

It’s not clear to me if Cong Edcel was expecting Bongbong and Imee, as soon as they turned eighteen, to have run out into the streets waving placards against their father and his martial law. I wouldn’t have bet my own money on something like that happening.

In our culture, we generally don’t believe that the parents’ sins should be visited on their children. Even less do we expect, let alone encourage, children to rise up against their parents, no matter how objectionable the old folks have become. Evidently Cong Edcel hasn’t seen enough teary local movies and TV soap operas to realize this.

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