I personally do not thinkx that the letter-complaint filed with the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court inviting her to investigate President Digong will prosper into a case, not because the complaint is utterly devoid of merit but because the International Criminal Court, ever so aware of its own vulnerability, will not like to be perceived as intrusive, preempting domestic mechanisms of redress. One principle courts, whether domestic or international, go by is as salutary as it is necessary: A court will not render a judgment it cannot enforce. An effete decision invites spite, compromises the credibility of the court, and denigrates its status as arbiter and adjudicator
But when news filtered through that a “secret cell” had been discovered in one of Manila’s police precincts, concealed behind a shelf, I was rudely roused from my somehow vague, waning but painfully lingering “hope” that things would improve, that the nightmare of arrant violation of law perpetrated by agents of the law, encouraged and abetted by high officials of the land would soon be behind us, that there would be a national awakening to the terrors of a nation that has gone down the dangerous path of State-sanctioned violence! When the awful pictures made their way to social media—and to mainstream news outlets—of the horrid place of confinement that violated every sense of decency, transgressed every principle of respect for other human persons, that made of detainees caged animals, then I knew what the President really ought to fear!
I do not doubt the President’s avowal that he wants to rid the country of criminality in its most heinous and violent forms—which is why he has trained his presidential ire on drug peddlers and users and all but reduced the national agenda to a single item: The eradication of the drug problem. But the statements that have gone public about guaranteeing police and other operatives presidential protection when they are charged, and, more ominously, the recklessness with which law-enforcers deal with their prey: The readiness of the excuse “nanlaban sila” (they fought back) and “tinangkang umagaw ng baril” (attempted to wrest control of the weapon)—resulting in a mounting body-count, and the ease with which most of the nation accepts these convenient fictions, knowing them to be fictions nonetheless is what scares me—as it should scare the President, for he may very well bequeath to the future the very opposite of what he has promised to deliver to the nation when his term is done!
The very persons and entities he has written off as his foes—human rights advocates, alternative law groups, the Church, international watch groups, the media—may turn out to be his most helpful friends. After all, long after the trolls shall have tired of trolling, the question will be asked about the State the President shall have left behind. It is immensely difficult to institutionalize the Rule of Law, but ever so necessary. It takes decades for citizens to learn that rather than slugging it out with foes, or starting the bloody and endless cycle of vendetta, one turns to the courts for redress, relief and satisfaction. It is no easy task for people to learn that no matter that I may be sorely lacking in what I would like to have, I cannot, without fear of legal sanction, usurp what is not mine. And, in many parts of the country, the point is not yet mastered that when a public official becomes overbearing and exploitative, the way to deal with him is not by hiring an assassin but by wielding the power of the ballot and the exercising of the right of suffrage. The alarm bells have been ringing for some time now: We may have started on the downward slope towards the horrible prospect of a failed state. An autocracy, in fact, should count as a failed state because it is held together (or made to appear so) by the fiat and the will of only one man!
The hidden cell and what one can only imagine to be the horrible mix of living bodies, excrement, refuse and and the empty shells of human dignity—this should be the starkest signpost of how far gone we are! Sure, there will be thousands on Facebook or Twitter who will unctuously defend this barbarity. But human reason is intractable, as are the institutions, the principles and the conventions of law! I grant the President’s sincerity about wanting to leave a legacy of a country renewed. It will serve him well to heed the threatening portents—and to discover who his true friends and allies are!