President Rodrigo Duterte, it appears, has been “Trumped.” Now the anti-Trump American media has discovered that it can attack both Duterte and their own president in a single blow, something like getting two for the price of one—and who could resist such a bargain?
But first, I find it amusing to hear Ruben Carranza, the very Yellow US-based lawyer of the International Center for Transitional Justice, inflate the number of the alleged victims of extra-judicial killings all by his lonesome, to a new high of 9,000. Carranza blurted out the figure to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who quite naturally had no way of fact-checking the number.
In the Philippines, we’re still debating if the 7,000 people in the “kill list” originally reported by online news outfit Rappler is based on more than just guesswork, since there have been no real efforts to analyze or even break down official figures on drug-related killings under the Duterte administration. And yet, the inflationary tally of those who would want to portray the Philippine president as a mass murderer keeps escalating.
Of course, the narrative of the supposed unabated mass killings perpetrated in the Philippines goes well with the US media’s conclusion that President Donald Trump was inviting a killer to the White House (as CNN reported) when he reached out to Duterte over the weekend. Conflating President Rodrigo Duterte’s alleged role in the killings with the apparent lack of sophistication in foreign affairs of the error-prone US president makes for a compelling story—never mind if truth is the first real casualty in the unfounded tale.
CNN was not alone in treating Trump’s invitation to Duterte to visit the US as an endorsement of the supposed killings, which the news channel, from all indications, did not even attempt to verify. The New York Times quickly cobbled together yet another anti-Duterte editorial—the third in a series in recent weeks —upping the ante with the headline “Trump embraces another despot.”
“Like so much else under President Trump, though, [the] idea [that the United States should provide a moral compass to the world] has now been turned on its head and people are worried about the very survival of the values on which America built its reputation and helped construct an entire international system, including the United Nations,” the newspaper said. “The latest example is Mr. Trump’s decision to invite Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, to the White House.”
I honestly don’t care what the Times thinks of Trump. But I have a real problem with the newspaper believing that it can insult the people of another independent, sovereign state by saying that its citizens have a ruler exercising absolute power in a brutal and oppressive manner, the standard definition of a despot.
And unlike anything that Duterte has done to anger the Americans and their media, aided by people like Carranza and the rest of the US-based remnants of the Washington-friendly Yellow regime, the Philippine president clearly had nothing to do with creating this situation. This was entirely Trump’s initiative—and now Filipinos everywhere who support Duterte have to suffer a fresh round of abuse from the anti-Trump press.
Of course, even if Trump hadn’t invited Duterte, the NYT and the rest would probably still have found something to hit Duterte with. It’s just sad that a friendly gesture by a US president hated by the media in his own land to his counterpart in the Philippines would be used as an opportunity to attack both.
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Senator Leila de Lima, detained on drug-related charges in Camp Crame, wants to electronically participate in Senate deliberations. Never mind if, according to established Senate rules on imprisoned members, she should just stay in jail and (hopefully) never be heard from until her release.
De Lima apparently believes that the administration she worked so hard for as justice secretary is still in power. Meaning, of course, that the rules apply to others, but not to her and those of her rejected political persuasion.
The senator need not look very far to discover that Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr., both incarcerated with her in the custodial center of the camp, were never allowed to participate in any Senate deliberations even if they remained senators. Even Senator Antonio Trillanes, who visited De Lima with her Liberal Party colleagues over the weekend, can tell her that he, too, was prevented from participating in sessions while he was detained for attempting to oust the government in an armed uprising.
The only thing new about De Lima’s plan is that she plans to be present in the Senate through unspecified electronic means, without physically leaving her place of detention. This appeal to technology, however, doesn’t sit will with Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III, who notes that De Lima’s lawyers should work very hard to convince the courts that the presence of her disembodied face and voice are really necessary for the chamber to function properly.
But if I were one of De Lima’s lawyers, I’d tell her to focus on her defense instead of insisting that she has to still make her presence felt electronically, as if she was just a Filipino overseas worker communicating with the family through Skype or Facebook Messenger. That would be time better spent for her, as she comes to the realization that she will no longer receive the special treatment she had gotten used to as a member of the untouchable Yellow royalty.
