In a vain attempt to justify the massive expenditure of official time, expense and effort in convening a kangaroo court to link former President Duterte and some of his close associates to so-called “extrajudicial killings,” or EJKs, the chairmen of the Quadcom (whatever that means) went to town recently brandishing a House bill penalizing said EJKs.

These people must really have such a low opinion of the Filipino people that they think we cannot see through such a sham. To give you an idea of how monumentally stupid the bill is, let us analyze the main provisions thereof.

According to that ridiculous bill, “(e)xtrajudicial killing (EJK) refers to any killing other than that imposed by the State pursuant to the provisions of the Constitution for heinous crimes or a deliberate and arbitrary killing of any person not authorized by a previous judgment pronounced by a competent court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

So many words to define what is already in the statute books and referred to with only two words: “murder” and “homicide.”

It appears that the drafters of the said bill have failed to realize that under the present state of legal affairs, due to the suspension of the death penalty — the implementation of which is the only judicially-sanctioned killing — all killings are EJKs, thus there is no need to define it anew. As the GenZ’ers would say, “MEMA: Me Masabi Lang.”

As if that weren’t dim-witted enough, the bill penalizes anyone who orders an EJK with life imprisonment for being guilty as a principal. But the Revised Penal Code (RPC) already punishes those perpetrators as “principals by inducement” with the same penalty.

The bill also metes out life in prison for those who kill for a reward, something the RPC already treats as “murder” because of the aggravating circumstance of “price, reward or promise,” and prescribes the same penalty of life.

As to the proposal to impose life imprisonment on public officials (including the police) for supposed EJKs, the same is already covered by Article 14 of the RPC, which elevates a killing to “murder” when the accused is found to have taken advantage of his public position or when it was done with the aid of armed men.

In addition, there are provisions for the imposition of life behind bars when the fatal assault is attended by evident premeditation, abuse of superior strength, and others of like nature. The creation of a so-called EJK Compensation Board, aside from adding another layer to the bureaucracy with its concomitant expenses, is also a duplication of a function already being discharged very efficiently by the courts in any murder case, pursuant to the principle that every person criminally liable is also civilly liable.

I could go on and on, but I am sure you get my drift. Differently stated, our system of laws needs this camote bill like we need a hole in the head. Which leads one to believe that some of our lawmakers already have one. I believe this is what happens when one subscribes to the Dan Fernandez principle that one need not be a lawyer to understand the law but may simply Google what the law is.

But what really rankles most is the hypocrisy of trying to justify the trial by a kangaroo court peopled by kangaroo congressmen disingenuously chasing one compound agenda: to discredit Duterte’s popular war on drugs, the persecution of the former President and his allies, and the demonization of critics.

Sadly for the Quadcom, they started a joke, which started the whole nation laughing (with apologies to the Bee Gees). The result of their hearings on EJK is, thus, one big joke coming from EJKs: Extra Jocular Kongressmen.