By now, millions would have viewed, read and known about Vice President Leni Robredo’s five-and-a-half-minute video addressed March 15 to the United Nations Commission on Narcotics Drugs denouncing alleged human rights violations by the Rodrigo Duterte administration in the Philippines.
In the video, the second highest official of the land talks about what she calls “very grim statistics: since July last year, more than 7,000 people have been killed in summary executions.” “Our people feel both hopeless and helpless—a state of mind that we must all take seriously,” she relates.
She claims “around 500 complaints have been filed at the Commission on Human Rights and recommended to the Department of Justice for filing of cases, but until now, seven months into the administration’s drug war, no information has been filed.”
Smiling throughout her narration, a stunningly made-up Robredo shows no grimness of face, nor a heart riven by sadness, and nor her passion apparent for those she claims whose rights are being violated by “summary executions”, for “our people [who] feel both hopeless and helpless”, for those “who may have undergone trauma due to extrajudicial killings.” Throughout the 330 seconds of her video, Leni sounds like a woman who has just said yes to a suitor and was looking forward to a dinner by candlelight after shooting the video and loading it online.
The first two reactions to her video notice the obvious.
“Why don’t I see seriousness in your eyes?” asks Gen Lowenberg. “It’s like you are reciting a poem in front of the teachers and the class.”
“She was so concerned of how she looks. Walang feeling sa kung ano yung binabasa. Mahalaga sa kanya mabasa nya at pa-cute at pa-charming sya. (She had no feeling with what she was reading. All that was important to her was to read it and make sure she looked cute and charming”), chimed in Mabait Tingnan.
The video is damaging to the Philippines. The uninitiated gets the impression that the Philippines is a country which violates UN treaties and international human rights norms, where there is no rule of law, where basic human rights are not respected and are instead abused, where people are gripped by fear and whose daily struggles are escalating, where the leader allows lies to distort the truth, and does not evoke in our people hope and inspiration.
It is as if the one in the video speaking was not the Vice President of the Philippines, nor a Filipino. Because no Filipino in his right mind and who truly loves his country should do those things: Shame the country before the world and before seven billion other people.
What is galling are the lies that Robredo peddles before the world. She claims, for instance, that 500 complaints have been filed before the Commission on Human Rights on extrajudicial killings and not a single case has been filed by the Department of Justice. I called the office of the CHR chair yesterday. They couldn’t confirm the bloated figures.
As you know, ours is not a small country. With a population of 105 million, the Philippines is the 12th largest nation on earth. In terms of nominal GDP (or economic output in current dollars), among 217 countries, we are 38th largest with GDP of $291 billion. In GDP purchasing power parity (or measured in what the US dollar can buy in local goods), the Philippines is the 27th largest country with GDP of $741 billion. In Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, Filipinos are middle class, with $3,547 per person income, nearly ten times the so-poverty income ($365).
In other measures of wealth, the Philippines is No. 2 in richness and diversity of its biodiversity, the world’s No. 1 nickel producer, the third richest in gold reserves, fourth in copper reserves, and the fifth largest mineralized country. We are also the world’s second-largest archipelago with a coastline twice that of the US in length. We have the largest number of marine workers in the world.
In terms of democratic habits and gender equality, the Philippines has had two woman presidents, only 40 years after gaining independence from America. We don’t have a tradition of employing slaves. The US does. Twelve US presidents owned slaves, including George Washington, the Father of the Nation.
The Americans, 241 years after independence, have yet to elect a woman president. The best try, by Hillary Clinton, was defeated by hacking by a foreign power. The one elected in 2016, lies every day, including in his tweets. Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban affects 200 million Muslims. The right to travel is a basic human right too. According to The Economist, the homicide rate in America today has been rising at its fastest since the 1970s. The murder rate in America is 8,000 per year (based on 280,000 murders from 1980 to 2015). “Over the past two years, America has become more murderous,” deadpans The Economist. Why doesn’t the UN look into murders in America?
In terms of Christian civilization, the Philippines is 495 years old. Up to the 1970s, the Philippines was the second richest country in Asia, outside Japan. It is also the largest Christian country in Asia.
So contrary to what VP Robredo is trying hard to make the world believe, the Philippines is not a failed state nor a failed democracy.
How can a country that allows a vice presidential candidate elected by computer manipulation and then masquerade as a human rights fighter before the world be considered a failed state and a failed democracy? It seems that in the Philippines to lie and to be an impostor are also human rights.
Robredo is a liar and an impostor. She is an enemy of the people.
If Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez wants to impeach Robredo, he should proceed without delay. He has the numbers. Justice delayed is justice denied. Lies cannot be allowed to taint the truth about our country and its people.