Robredo’s low regard for the PET

“Instead of presuming good faith on the part of the soon-to-beappointed justices, which is a presumption mandated by law, Robredo doubted their impartiality.

Leni Robredo, whose dubious claim to the vice presidency remains in limbo, has been giving numerous television interviews lately in a desperate attempt to give the public the impression that she will win in the election contest pending before the Supreme Court (SC), constituted as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

Robredo was proclaimed winner of the May 2016 vice-presidential election, leading over ex-senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. by a very slim margin of about 200,000 votes. Marcos Jr. filed an election protest before the PET, citing fraudulent canvassing in certain election precincts.

Last month, the PET issued an order prohibiting Robredo and Marcos Jr. from making public comments on the pending election protest. Robredo’s television interviews are clearly in defiance of that gag order. They show the contemptuous regard she has for the PET.

In a television interview on 24 October, Robredo questioned President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, and said it wasn’t working because the drug menace remains, three years since it was launched. She added that there is a need for the United Nations International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the President’s anti-drug strategy.

“The President has already made very serious threats to drug syndicates, to drug lords… and yet it’s still very prevalent, so obviously, it’s not working,” Robredo declared in sloppy English. She spoke between smirks and half-smiles, thus suggesting that she was even pleased with the thought that the drug menace lingers in the country.

Salvador Panelo, the president’s spokesman, later replied that Robredo’s remarks are groundless, and that she refuses to acknowledge the success of the President’s war on illegal drugs. He also said Robredo merely echoed the lies and black propaganda of the discredited political opposition. He stressed that more than a million drug personalities have surrendered to the authorities since 2016; almost a million have undergone drug rehabilitation; and more than P35 million worth of illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia have been seized.

It will be recalled that at the start of President Duterte’s war on drugs, government officials, like Quezon City Councilor Hero Bautista, admitted to drug use and supposedly underwent rehabilitation.

Robredo also does not realize that the ICC cannot intervene in the President’s drug war because the Philippines has withdrawn from the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the ICC.

In July this year, the UN Human Rights Council issued a resolution calling for an investigation of the deaths attributed to Duterte’s anti-drug campaign. Duterte does not recognize that resolution, and rightly so, because it is an affront to Philippine sovereignty and does not have the support of a majority of the member-states comprising the council.

A recent documentary aired on a private television channel showed a horse coachman expressing his satisfaction that the streets in Tondo, Manila are now safe because Duterte got rid of the drug addicts who used to sow terror in the streets before May 2016.

Last week, President Duterte challenged Robredo to lead his war on drugs instead of complaining in the sidelines. Robredo balked.

Last 28 October, Robredo again defied the PET’s gag order by appearing in another television interview. She brought along Romulo Macalintal, her lawyer in the PET case. Macalintal ran for senator in the May 2019 elections under the anti-Duterte, Liberal Party-sponsored Otso Diretso ticket, but he lost miserably.

In one segment of the interview, the hostess told Robredo that President Duterte will soon be appointing four new justices of the SC to fill up the existing vacancies. She asked Robredo what the latter thought about the likelihood that the Duterte appointees will vote against her in the pending PET case.

Robredo replied that the soon-to-be appointed justices may try all they want to rule in favor of Marcos Jr., but they will find it very difficult to do that because ballots cannot be altered.

Evidently, instead of presuming good faith on the part of the soon-to-be appointed justices, which is a presumption mandated by law, Robredo doubted their impartiality and assumed that the soon-to-be appointed justices will try to favor Marcos Jr. but will not succeed in that regard.

That remark shows the very low regard Robredo has for the PET members who are appointees of President Duterte.