Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Sunday said the time when the United States could pull strings attached to financial aid is long gone.
“Mentoring us in the ways of democracy and due process smacks of racism and superiority complex,” Sotto said, reacting to US senators who banned from entry Philippine officials involved in the continued detention of Senator Leila de Lima, who they believe is being wrongfully held for political reasons.
“We are no longer the Commonwealth of the Philippines,” Sotto said.
The Commodore Deweys of today can no longer bully and deceive the Filipino, he said. “We have learned our lesson.”
He said the ban proposed by Senators Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin can be seen as a bill of attainder, which is prohibited by the US and Philippine constitutions.
“Maybe the legal staff of the two senators should study their Constitution,” he said.
A bill of attainder is defined as a legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial. The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto law will be passed.”
An opposition lawmaker, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, meanwhile, said he believed the move by the US senators “does not intrude on Philippine sovereignty.”
“The implementation of an immigration policy belongs to the host state’s exclusive sovereign jurisdiction. The basis of such exclusionary act of sovereignty is beyond question by other governments or parties,” Lagman said.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Sunday played down the move by Leahy and Durbin, saying the two may suffer a backlash for interfering in the Philippines’ internal affairs.
“I do not believe that the views and opinion of a handful of US senators… reflect the sentiment of
the entire US Congress, majority of whom exert great efforts to acquire full and unbiased information before opening their mouths, who practice what they preach about due process and the rule of law, and
most especially respect the independence of a co-equal sovereign nation,” Guevarra said in a text message.
“These minority senators do not have to bother about what the Philippine government may do in reaction to their public statements; instead they have to deal with the reaction of their own constituencies and the judgment of a whole thinking community of democratic nations,” he added.
He said he did not subscribe to a proposal from some senators to institute a similar ban on Leahy and Durbin.
“It’s not important to me whether they can step foot in Philippine territory or not. What is relevant to me is the potential backlash that these senators may suffer in their own country and abroad,” he said.
Earlier, Senator Christopher Go said he would ask the President to ban Durbin and Leahy from entering the country.
The Palace on Sunday slammed Leahy for ignorance of this country’s judicial rules.
“The good US Senator is ignorant of our procedural rules subjecting a person charged with the commission of a crime. Neither has he set foot in the country for the sole purpose of personally examining the case of De Lima that he may have a reasonable basis to buttress his proposal,” Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said.
Panelo previously described the move as a brazen attempt to intrude in the country’s internal affairs, and said it treats the Philippines as an “inferior state.”
In respoonse, Leahy said his country provides a large amount of aid to the Philippines.
“I assume President [Rodrigo] Duterte’s spokesman who defended the wrongful imprisonment of Senator De Lima does not consider our aid to be ‘interfering’ in their sovereignty,” Leahy said.
“Our aid is not a blank check, and when Philippine officials abuse the justice system for the purpose of political retribution, we have a responsibility to respond,” the American senator added.
Panelo, responding to Leahy, said aids or grants are not a form of sovereign interference and given by a state for “comity and friendship.”
“Grants or aids with attached conditions are anathema to the very purpose of such generosity and we reject them, for they clothe the donor the authority as well as the gumption to meddle in our internal affairs thereby trampling our sovereign rights,” Panelo said.
“We remind Senator Leahy that the Republic of the Philippines is not a vassal nor a colony of America. It is an independent state that is fiercely protective of its sovereignty and subservient to no other country,” he added.
De Lima on Saturday thanked the US lawmakers for their proposal and “for reminding us that the world is still watching.”
She has been detained since February 2017 over her alleged links to the illegal drug trade when she was still Justice secretary. She has repeatedly denied the accusations and dubbed the allegations against her as “political persecution.”
The senator, a vocal critic of Duterte’s anti-narcotics crackdown, is not entitled to bail and might face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if found guilty.