AT this point in Rodrigo Duterte’s International Criminal Court case in The Hague, one thing is clear: Nicholas Kaufman, the former president’s lead defense lawyer, whom legal critics have described as “underwhelming,” is indeed underwhelming. During the first day of the confirmation-of-charges hearing, for example, Kaufman was more focused on theatrics and the false interpretation of Philippine events during Duterte’s presidency than on mounting a solid legal defense that would raise doubts on the serious charges raised by the prosecution against his client.
Two Filipino lawyers who are “legal twins” in terms of zealotry to the Duterte cause and some physical characteristics, as well — Harry Roque and Vitaliano Aguirre II — could have raised a more legally focused defense of Duterte in that hearing. Kaufman appeared like a drowning, desperate man clutching at legal straws during the hearing, and legal twins Aguirre and Roque, who hold that the ex-president is some infallible demigod, could have offered a better defense.
What was easily the most desperate, incredulous part of Kaufman’s defense of Duterte during the first day of that hearing that even nonlawyers regarded as a non sequitur was this: his statement that the “media controlled by the powerful” conspired to paint Duterte’s war on drugs as a murderous rampage against innocent citizens due to the elites’ loathing for Duterte’s commitment to the rule of law and to law and order. He described civil society as a “loose coalition funded by the tycoons with even grander designs.”
Contrary to Kaufman’s desperate and clearly losing effort to portray Duterte as an unconventional leader who banged heads with the Filipino elites to favor the huddled masses, who, in turn, triggered the elites’ animus toward the masses-loving Duterte, the truth is: members of the Filipino elites, with the exception of one or two families, genuflected before Duterte. Then, in their own words, they became “fast friends” with the autocratic leader.
The sycophancy of the elites was duly rewarded.
In exchange for their acquiescence, Duterte gave them free rein to further tighten their grip over choice sectors of the Philippine economy. The greatest gift came via a Duterte-initiated law that reduced the corporate income tax (CIT) in stages until it reached the rock-bottom 20 percent. No one from the equally slavish Congress raised a spirited, full-throated opposition to the measure when Duterte urged the two chambers of Congress to pass it.
The sycophantic Congress, remember, also passed during Duterte’s term the law on retail trade liberalization that gave corporate-owned deep discounters free rein to defenestrate “sari-sari” owners. That same Duterte-era Congress ruthlessly scrapped quantitative restrictions, which held for a generation as a policy on rice importation, then removed the cap on rice imports. Those twin moves rendered small rice farmers into dead men walking.
Did you know of a single instance during the Duterte years that the Philippine Competition Commission reined in corporate greed and overkill to protect small corporate players from the giants?
The Filipino economic elites were so coddled by the Duterte administration that even the Covid-19 pandemic hardly dented their yearly corporate earnings. At one point, the Philippine economy suffered an almost 10-percent drop in growth, making the country the worst performer among the 20 top economies in the Asia-Pacific. The giant corporations hardly suffered a setback because of the pampering and coddling of the Duterte administration.
Exhibit A is the Villar family, led by Manuel “Manny” Villar Jr., who, during the Duterte regime, started his ascent on the list of the wealthiest Filipinos until he became, wealth tracker Forbes said, the richest man in the country. The Villar family is legendary for its pro-Duterte zealotry, and Villar’s son Mark was the all-powerful secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways during the entirety of the Duterte administration.
Had Kaufman bothered to check the list of the 40 wealthiest families during the Duterte administration, whose combined wealth was — and still is — more than what is owned by the poor at the bottom 50 percent — he will find out this tie that bound: servility and silence as Duterte’s war on drugs turned into a killing spree of innocents like Kian delos Santos.
Who protested the killing spree, then gave sanctuary to the families of the drug war victims? Priests, mostly, and I am proud that three of the five bishops charged with sedition during the administration’s peak cruelty came from my province: now-Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, Teodoro Bacani Jr. and Honesto Ongtioco. Fr. Flavie Villanueva, who kept a tally of drug war fatalities so that their names will not be forgotten. The nuns who embraced those widowed and orphaned by the war on drugs. Then-senator Leila de Lima, who protested from her prison cell. And her erstwhile Senate colleagues, all with the Liberal Party. At the House of Representatives, it was mostly the Makabayan bloc. Antonio Trillanes IV.
The often-overlooked voices of protests came from us, ordinary Filipinos. Laborers, farmers, fishermen, human rights lawyers, media workers and people from the slum areas were at the nexus of the killing spree.
The voiceless raised their voices and refused, as Dylan Thomas wrote, to go gently into that good night, in contrast to the servility of the elites.