“It upends them all.”
Just as I turned off the monitor from which I watched intermittently the long Senate investigative hearing “in aid of legislation” last Monday, a song came to mind.
It is that song drunk karaoke addicts would take turns warbling in murdered English, desafinado at that — My Way, popularized by Frank Sinatra and countless others after, originally “Comme d’habitude” by Jacques Revaux, then translated into immortal lyrics by Paul Anka.
“And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain,” it begins.
The former president kept repeating he was now 79 years old, prone to forgetting details as Senadora Risa kept badgering him from the prodding of her staff, whose name I forget myself, but used to be a Malaya reporter in the Jucra beat.
Lapsus mentis? Nah, he is 79, and seniors always keep tabs on their real age. Yet it bolsters the former president’s disclaimer about not remembering details.
“I’ll state my case of which I’m certain,” the song further goes. And Duterte said just that. He did what he had to do to protect his people and save his nation from the scourge of illegal drugs which “would destroy the nation.”
“I did what I had to do,” and the former president claimed full legal and moral responsibility, but never gave details which would stand in court, no admission of some corpus delicti here or there, urbi et patriam, in Davao or the country.
“I faced it all, and I stood tall, and did it my way,” which Duterte translated before the senators, in his own inimitable “bastos at walanghiya” style.
The sideshow that was quite revealing was when a PNP officer told the senators that pastor Bienvenido Abante and action star Dan Fernandez tried to pressure him before a QuadComm hearing to corroborate testimonies earlier given by retired PNP colonel Royina Garma.
If the former president should deign it worthwhile to face the QuadComm which likewise invited him to its inquisitorial proceedings, he could now turn the tables on the pastor and the actor. He could deny them his presence, and tell them to just read the transcript of the Pimentel committee hearing, rather than to respond to lesser mortals in the lower house.
But of course, the whole QuadComm hearings were scripted, which is why you can see the “honorables” read their notes from paper or I-pad. And the resource persons knew how to respond. If someone strayed from the script and went beyond the obligatory “yes or no,” they would be held in contempt, by habitual motion from a former communist guerilla.
The central issue that boggles the mind is why, with all these “testimonies” in the HoR, and now the “admissions” as Senadora Risa pointed out, cases have not been filed in our courts against the former president?
Why for one, has not the former justice secretary turned senator turned detainee now freed, convinced as she always had been about the former mayor’s “crimes,” not filed a case while she was chair of the Commission on Human Rights under the president she stopped from leaving the country, or when she was the all-too-powerful justice secretary under the now deceased president?
Did not Senadora Risa say, “I hope and I imagine that the Department of Justice is watching dahil ang daming admissions ng dating presidente involving criminal acts”.
And amen to that, the senate president said a day after. On the record and under oath.
As Paul Anka wrote, “I state my case, of which I’m certain; the record shows, I took it all, and did it my way.”
This non-lawyer thinks the former president has check-mated his detractors by accepting full legal responsibility.
What justification would the International Criminal Court in far-away Den Haag have to summon the former president when our own justice system can very well undertake his prosecution and trial, with all those “testimonies” and an “admission” beside?
If the current president and his “Rasputins” had the same Machiavellian instincts as his father with his Estelito’s and Juan’s, I would think all these inquisitions were intended to ensure that the former president escapes any ICC intervention, as prayed for by Sonny Trillanes and the pinklawan spokesmen styled as vloggers. But the junior president is far from being Machiavellian.
So if the DOJ does prosecute, and the trials start, picture the scene where a defiant 79-year old leader, yet adored by many, walks with a cane and then repeats his mantra about “you are concerned about human rights; mine was about human life”.
His way upends them all.
