"The records will bear this out."
US Senate Resolution No. 142 sponsored by senators Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) was unanimously approved. It called for the immediate release from detention of Senator Leila de Lima and a stop to the harassment of Rappler’s CEO identified as Maria Ressa. The Senate resolution described De Lima as a “prisoner of conscience detained solely on account of her political views and for legitimately exercising her freedom of expression.” In the case of Ressa, her case is “part of the government pattern to weaponize the rule of law to suppress independent media.”
Malacañang, for its part, accused the US Senate of being misinformed and for stepping into Philippine sovereignty through its resolution. Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo was quoted saying that “it is brazen and heedless affront against the dignity not only of the Philippine government but also of our country’s sovereignty as well. It is an undisguised and outrageous intrusion into the internal affairs a sovereign state, and there can no excuse for the US Senate committee not to know that the Philippines has long ceased to be a colony of the United States.”
If we are to give our observation about this latest political skirmish in our relations with the US, this column suggests that the US senators better concentrate their strategy on how to impeach President Trump. That way, they would not be creating more enemies that will contribute to the further political isolation of the US. Just like many of our hypocritical politicians, the US senators are into their usual grandstanding, hoping they would be able to entice Filipino-Americans to vote for them considering that US election is just around the corner.
What makes the issue unusual is the fact that Senator De Lima was arrested on drug-related charges, specifically for receiving bride money from a high profile convicted criminal involved in a kidnapping-for-ransom identified as Jaybee Sebastian, now serving and acting as kingpin inside the National Penitentiary.
No proof is needed that De Lima, then the Secretary of Justice of the discredited Noynoy Aquino administration, was involved or connived in the distribution of illegal drugs. Her singing and dancing inside the maximum-security prison area where Sebastian put up his own nightclub with De Lima almost serenading the criminal kingpin is prurient, vulgar and demeaning, not to say that she made all the guards in the National Penitentiary her accomplice in violating the rules of the Bureau of Prisons. How she sang and danced in front of those convicted murderers show just how morally depraved she is to be absolutely unfit to her position as Secretary of Justice. In that, would any sane person still demand evidence to pin her down or insist she is “a prisoner of conscience”?
The same can be said of this American mascot named Maria Ressa. This self-styled crusader for press freedom is suspected to be sporting dual citizenship. If proven, that gives the government the right to deport her without much ado. It is no longer for her to argue that the government should prove she is an undesirable alien or has violated our laws for which deportation proceedings can be initiated against her, for logically, she could invoke the American laws as a citizen why she is being unjustly punished?
If we cannot punish our own citizens on the ground that they are sporting dual citizenship, we might as well kick her out, and let the country of her choice resolve that problem she has created. Let us not bother ourselves about the consequences of her act. Let the person that created that problem resolve that issue.
Dual citizenship is an indelible mark indicating she holds no loyalty to this country much that patriotism is indivisible to a person’s love of country. To revoke her dual citizenship status cannot reduce her to a stateless person to say that her human rights were violated. Kicking her out is like returning her to the country of her first choice.
Aside from the libel case she faces, there are serious charges filed against her and this involves her act of openly making a travesty of our laws. She acts as though she is above our law. The irritating fact is she is acting recklessly because as an American mascot, she is protected by the US government.
Ressa knows that a foreigner is not allowed to own mass media in this country. Her having dual citizenship or even a citizen of this country is not a birthright. When she put up Rappler, a foreign-owned social media with her as its front, she knows she would be violating not only the laws of the land but of our Constitution. She cannot pretend to be ignorant because freedom of the press connotes that she is knowledgeable enough to know and write about our laws.
We have to point out that when she made a last-minute strategy to demand from her foreign funder to donate funds to Rappler and its officers, and present it now as their capital, that mascot had in mind she was able to get away with the law. Ressa is pretending to be clever having in mind that our officials were born yesterday like those hillbilly senators defending her and De Lima.
The problem is she forgot to declare that the funds supposedly donated by American media tycoon, Pierre Omidyar, is taxable. Her late declaration of said donation for the corporation gave rise to another case against her for tax evasion, specifically for “violating Section 255 of the Tax Code or failure to supply correct information in the Income Tax Return (ITR) for 2015, and Value Added Tax (VAT) returns for the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2015.”
Because of her difficulty explaining the charges, her battery of media hackers cum foreign mercenaries are accusing the Duterte government now of harassment. This gave the hillbilly US senators reason to pressure on the government to release a morally-depraved senator and to stop harassing their mascot.
Another item this column would like to raise is the demand of the US Senate resolution to release a person who is already under detention for violation of our laws and for which she is now being prosecuted. Those yokels should know that once a case is filed in court, and the accused has already been charged and arrested, the case is already outside the control and jurisdiction of the President. He cannot even exercise his power to pardon or commute the sentence. He can only exercise that power after the accused has been sentenced by the court or to put it bluntly, after conviction. To demand the release of De Lima is a direct affront to our judicial system which nobody in this country could violate. Pardon and commutation is only applicable after she has been sentenced.
On the other hand, not a single instance has the US surrendered any of its citizens who are accused or have violated our laws. The US has accorded their soldiers stationed here that they cannot be criminally prosecuted. If the issue has become sensational, they just whisked them away from our jurisdiction to be forgotten by history.
On our extradition treaty with the US, it seems the treaty has been working exclusively in their favor, viz. against us. An extradition treaty is supposed to work mutually in favor of the contracting parties. But in our case, our extradition treaty with the US has consistently been working against us, for it seems we are the only ones obligated to surrender our citizen who is wanted or has committed offense in the US. The records will bear this out. There has never been an instance where the US has surrendered any of its citizens to our court for trial and possible sentencing if found guilty.
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