Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo’s announcement on Friday—to the effect that the absence of a legal complaint against Davao City Mayor “Inday Sara” Duterte meant that she would probably not be sanctioned for physically assaulting sheriff Abe Andres—greatly dismayed us. Now that sources in the Department of Interior and Local Government say that the DILG would in fact recommend an administrative charge of misconduct against Duterte, at the very least, we confess ourselves only disappointed.
But we remain wary.
While we recognize the department’s speedy response to the incident caught on television and since circulated on the Internet, we were taken aback by Robredo’s unexpected embrace of a narrowly legalistic interpretation of the DILG’s role.
“Our process is there should be a case filed with the OP [the Office of the President] so it can be treated as a complaint. That’s the only time we can impose sanctions,” he said. “There was no such [complaint], so we will just complete our recommendations.” But the fact that there is no complainant, he added, means that “in that sense we cannot punish her.”
This is completely wrong, because in this view the issue of liability and therefore the question of punishment depend entirely on the participation of a complainant. We can best appreciate the error in this view by summarizing the matter in the form of a question: If there is no complainant, does that mean there was no violation?
But in fact the mayor did attack the sheriff. The conditions that led to the incident and the circumstances of the incident itself are the subject of a DILG investigation; we expect the report to be released any day now.
We have acknowledged more than once that Duterte had good reason to feel aggrieved—but even this cannot justify what she did. (This is how her father, Rodrigo Duterte, the master of Davao City politics, defends her actions, by pointing out that the regional trial court erred in ordering the demolition and that the sheriff was mistaken in carrying out the erroneous order. Even if these assertions were true, they do not justify a local executive venting her frustrations by beating up a hapless officer of the court.) To let her act go unpunished is to prove that the law does not apply to the powerful.
We are not saying that Duterte should be removed from the mayorship, a sanction within Robredo’s range of options. The DILG’s investigators would be in a better position to recommend the proportionate sanction, one that is most appropriate to the actual facts of the incident. But we share the view of many that some sanction must be imposed. Duterte not only abused the powers of her office (the willingness of her police escort to physically get hold of the sheriff was telling); she violated the sheriff’s civil and human rights too.
To argue that sanctions are no longer an option because of the lack of a complainant seems to us a willful closing of the eyes. Does the DILG secretary really fail to realize that Andres did not file a complaint precisely because the Duterte family’s political clout had intimidated him into doing so? And has the secretary really forgotten that the Sheriffs Confederation of the Philippines already filed a complaint with the Ombudsman on Andres’ behalf, and is therefore in a position to file a complaint with the Office of the President?
We welcome the news that came out on Saturday that the DILG report under preparation would recommend the filing of a misconduct charge against Duterte. But we remain wary because a recommendation is one thing, and the actual course of action the department will choose is another. And because Robredo’s Friday announcement put us on guard.
We have said again and again, the President must expect higher standards from his own friends and political allies. The seeming exoneration that Robredo hinted at over the weekend was uncharacteristic of him—but it was entirely characteristic of the Aquino administration. It reminded us, with a shudder of apprehension, of the kid-gloves treatment received by those friends and political allies of the President who were implicated in the Aug. 23, 2010 hostage-taking fiasco. Will the President and his men once again resolve to protect their own?