A truth commission on Duterte’s war on drugs

Whether intended or not, the ongoing hearings in both houses of Congress are doing exactly what a special truth commission on the abuses committed under the Duterte regime would have set out to do if such a body had been created by law. Right now, these hearings may go on indefinitely, at great expense and with no clear resolution, until the viewing public gets tired listening to the same lies and watching the same political posturing.

A truth commission would have formulated its objectives more clearly and laid out its procedures more systematically. Its proceedings would have been less repetitive. There would have been less opportunity for grandstanding and greater respect for the rights of witnesses and resource persons. A lot of legislative time would have been freed for the equally urgent but less visible work of reviewing existing laws and crafting better ones.

Admittedly, the creation of such a commission would have been impossible during the honeymoon period of the Marcos-Duterte alliance. Indeed, even after the breakup, it would have been difficult to initiate such a move without it being perceived as politically motivated. But it’s not too late to establish a truth and justice commission on the Duterte regime’s so-called war on drugs.

The current Congress has barely touched this topic in its ongoing hearings. As shocking as the truths emerging from the inquiry into the Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) may be, they surely pale in comparison with the abuses, the corruption, and the multiple institutional failures that attended the conduct of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war. The brief testimony of former Iloilo mayor Jed Mabilog before the House quad committee this week offered us a glimpse of the extent of the abuses committed and the impunity with which lives were destroyed in the name of eliminating the drug menace. Mabilog was lucky to have influential contacts that gave him advance warning of the fate that awaited him. He left the country and lived to tell his story. But thousands of others in the lower rungs of our society, who landed in the same drug lists created by the regime at various levels, were not as lucky.

They ended up dead on the orders of someone, in a brutal war in which fulfilling assigned quotas of dead people was all that mattered. It is this unspeakable crime against humanity that the International Criminal Court has been at pains to document—but which, for some reason, the government of President Marcos has not been particularly keen to look into. Mabilog’s appearance at the House of Representatives seemed almost like a minor distraction from the main business of the day—the interrogation of the mysterious Alice Guo, the recently repatriated Chinese Pogo queen and former mayor of Bamban, Tarlac.

I’m aware that extrajudicial killings or EJKs are on the agenda of the powerful quad committee of the lower chamber. But this subject may not attract the same level of viewer engagement as the Pogo hearings. What makes the latter compelling fare for millions of Filipino viewers here and abroad rests as much in the colorful personalities involved as in the personal nature of the questions being asked.

It’s entertaining to watch the lawmakers outdo one another in coaxing and coercing their witnesses to speak the truth. Still, it is too early to tell whether such hearings serve any purpose other than to demonstrate how much power lawmakers wield, or who can ask sensible questions.

When hearings in aid of legislation take the form of courtroom trials, their function as sources of useful information takes a backseat. Invited resource persons and witnesses become justly protective of their rights against self-incrimination. This is especially so when criminal charges against them have already been filed in proper courts of law or other law-enforcement bodies. But even when they face no such charges, they know that anything they say in such hearings may be used against them as evidence in future criminal cases.

Clearly, the kind of investigation that lawmakers have been conducting in the past couple of weeks is better undertaken by those agencies of government that are specifically charged with implementing the law. But it is a testimony to the lack of trust in the capability and integrity of these agencies that senators and congressmen are doing what is supposed to be their work.

This is where truth commissions specially created by law come in. They are particularly useful in bolstering the legitimacy of new democratic regimes after a traumatic period of authoritarian abuse and impunity. As I said earlier, it’s not too late for Mr. Marcos to initiate the formation of a truth commission to investigate the abuses committed in connection with Duterte’s all-out war on drugs.

An impartial commission of this nature, led by credible citizens and armed with a clear mandate, will go a long way in giving justice and moral closure to the countless victims of that heinous crime. Who knows—it may also partly redeem the Marcos name in the eyes of those who remember it only in connection with the betrayal of the republic on Sept. 21, 1972.

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