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Philippines
Thursday, March 28, 2024

The hatchet woman

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Leila is all over the place once again. Her puppet masters must be so proud of their investment in her Senate victory.

I find myself agreeing with the new senator for Bicol, Leila de Lima, when she says that she believes the hoary old theory that “scalawags” in the ranks of the national police are behind many of the killings of drug suspects to coincide with the anti-narcotics campaign of the Duterte administration. But I cannot really take De Lima’s side when she says, in the same breath, that she has “witnesses” to back up her claim in the Senate investigation that she will soon conduct.

Allow me to explain: On the same day that De Lima railed against the killings yet again (with accompanying fanfare from some sectors of the media) and urged everyone from President Rodrigo Duterte on down to monitor her investigation, the agency that she used to head did something very un-De Lima-like.

The Department of Justice, headed now by Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, filed charges against 88 suspects in the so-called Mamasapano Massacre—more than a year and a half after the gory killing of 44 members of the Special Action Force by rebel forces in Maguindanao. The filing of the formal charges against members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and other suspects was something De Lima was never able to do.

As late as January this year, when the Senate was already demanding that the DoJ lodge formal charges in connection with the massacre, no one was still being held responsible for the heinous crime by the department. De Lima had earlier enumerated unidentified Moro suspects (all of them surnamed with the generic “Doe”) that she wanted held responsible; none of them were really named by her or her department—or by her successor in office last January, Emmanuel Caparas.

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This is why I can’t really trust De Lima to get to the bottom of the supposed extra-judicial killings of drug suspects. She couldn’t even get moving on the Mamasapano case when she had the authority to do so; what makes her think that now, as a mere senator with no real authority to lodge actual charges against crime suspects, she can actually do so?

It’s just like De Lima’s well-publicized campaign against drugs and other contraband in the New Bilibid Prison. Not only did she not make a dent in the thriving trade in all things illegal inside Muntinlupa, her term has become synonymous with the blossoming of the narcotics “industry” behind bars, of all places.

The sad truth about De Lima is that she is hopelessly partisan. She will not lift a finger to go after her political masters (like when she protected then President Noynoy Aquino in the aftermath of Mamasapano), but will defy the Supreme Court itself (like in the case of the disregarded restraining order that allowed Gloria Arroyo to travel), if that is what these same masters of hers want.

The woman is no “fiscalizer,” as she claims; she’s just another high-profile political hatchet-woman in the Senate. And as far as I know, the Senate hatchet-job committee is still headed by a certain Antonio Trillanes.

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Far away from the political acrobatics in Manila, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III is working to bring home or to find new jobs for upwards of 9,000 Filipinos stranded by company closures in Saudi Arabia, where more than a million of our overseas workers toil. Bello’s latest mission, after the Saudi king approved the waiving of the fees of the distressed workers, is to secure commitments from Saudi companies and authorities that the unpaid wages of the stranded Filipinos will be given, whether they return home or find jobs in other companies in the Middle Eastern state.

Bello told me how he has been given blanket authority to aid the stricken Filipinos, many of whom don’t even know how to find their next meal or a roof over their heads at night. And Duterte has ordered the release of millions from the President’s social fund to pay for the effort, apart from directing the various agencies involved in helping Filipinos abroad to spend their own funds.

Before Bello left, he quietly inaugurated the one-stop service center at the offices of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration at the corner of Edsa and Ortigas Avenue. The center permanently locates satellite offices of practically all the government agencies that overseas workers have to transact with and get papers from and has been drawing raves from the people who used to have to go all over Metro Manila just to secure the needed permits to work abroad.

Longtime OFW welfare rights advocate Susan “Toots” Ople is amazed at the actions of the silent but very effective new labor secretary, who is also involved in the peace talks initiated by the Duterte government with rebel groups. “Kaya naman pala gawin e,” an admiring Ople told me, apropos of the Saudi rescue effort and the new one-stop center.

As a longtime believer in the lack of empathy of the previous administration and the need for the return of simple common sense in government, I agree wholeheartedly with Ople. All it takes really for a government to succeed is a genuine desire to help our countrymen and the work ethic to get things done.

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