President Duterte’s toying with a revolutionary government is perilous. It is legally untenable, constitutionally infirm, and politically indefensible. As envisioned, it is most unrevolutionary and antipeople, a sheer monopolization of naked power that is despotic and self-righteous. It will just boomerang and even decapitate those tinkering with the idea under any strained justification.
This, compounded with the supposed termination of peace negotiations based on distorted perspectives at a time when it is needed most and while a ray of hope was peeking in the horizon, the casting of derisive labels on progressive forces that invite reprisal and reaction, the strong stifling of legitimate dissent, the bellicose response to acceptable legal remedies to protect human rights, and the freezing of uncooperative traditional democratic institutions, among a plethora of others, may well be the political dead of winter we dread.
There is no other recourse but to fight and we, the lawyers on the side of the oppressed and exploited, will be with the people. We should weather this passing might of populist fascism and seek refuge in truth and justice, in common sense, in fairness and in reason.
NERI COLMENARES, chair, EDRE U. OLALIA, president, EPHRAIM B. CORTEZ, secretary general, National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers