The sanctimonious horde made up of the rights groups and the rich Western nations again ganged up on the Philippines, making it appear as a lawless nation that has little regard for civility.
In the country's fourth Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council assembly in Geneva, a 13-page report was issued on the Philippines containing some 297 recommendations from the priggish lot that were concerned mostly with the conduct of the campaign against narcotics.
The Western nations which heavily relied on foreign rights groups and local left-wing organizations for their input concluded a "deteriorating" state of human rights protection.
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla described many of the proposals as "culturally reprehensible." The points raised accompanied impositions that the country will have to follow to be considered within the fold of a civilized society in the mold of the Western model.
Among the recommendations is that the Philippines rejoin the International Criminal Court which proved to be a prejudiced organization in the previous regime.
The ICC welcomed the filing of a complaint from a rabid political opponent of former President Rodrigo Duterte, accusing him of 20,000 deaths in the war on drugs, a figure which was found to have been manufactured in the dirty tricks factory of putschist Antonio Trillanes IV.
The lawyer who submitted the complaint to ICC, Jude Sabio, tried to withdraw the case after a spat with Trillanes over a retainer fee but the tribunal persisted and started a preliminary examination.
Realizing that the ICC is just using the Philippines to regain credibility and of course funding from the same Western critics, Duterte ordered the country's withdrawal from the Rome Statute that created the ICC.
The brickbats at the UNHRC were meant to coax President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos to start the process of rejoining the ICC.
The report on the Philippines mentioned extensively impunity linked to drug-related killings, corruption, violence against women, discrimination, and the crackdown on "dissenting voices."
A specifically baseless and reprehensible portion of the report stated the "incitement to violence against and extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders by high-level officials, including the former president."
The basis of such an assessment is the sharp rhetorics of Duterte against narcotics criminals and syndicates meant obviously to scare them from engaging in the nefarious trade.
"Don't do it or I will kill you," Duterte would say in nearly all of his addresses touching on the drug problem.
The Western impositions were intrusive, including a demand to revise the Anti-Terrorism Law which was painstakingly crafted to secure the nation after the Marawi City incursion of the Islamic State and their local bandits.
Duterte drew his popular support from the appreciation of Filipinos on his decisive and quick actions to the pestering problems of the society particularly the drug menace which now threatens a strong comeback.
His swift action on the Marawi siege prevented the IS design from dominating Southeast Asia.
His pushback on the Western superpowers is rooted in the treatment of the Philippines as an inferior colony that must comply with every dictate of the imperial overlords.
These omniscient Western martinets should not look too far from their backyard to exercise their self-righteous condemnations drawn from the days of the inquisition.