Duterte’s foes, allies to block CHR budget cut
Prez won’t show bank details
MANILA, Sept 13, (Agencies): Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s critics and allies in the Senate vowed on Wednesday to block a lower house move to slash the annual budget of a public-funded human rights agency opposed to his bloody war on drugs to just $20.
The house, dominated by Duterte’s supporters, voted on Tuesday to allocate a 2018 budget of just 1,000 pesos ($20) to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), which has investigated hundreds of killings during the president’s ferocious antinarcotics crackdown.
Vice-President Leni Robredo, who was not Duterte’s running mate and has locked horns with him numerous times, said the lawmakers’ move effectively abolishes the CHR, a constitutional body.
Duterte’s signature campaign has left thousands of mostly urban poor Filipinos dead. Critics say the lawmakers are trying to retaliate against the CHR for pursuing allegations of executions by police during sting operations, which police deny.
The CHR is among the domestic and foreign rights groups that Duterte frequently admonishes, accusing them of lecturing him and disregarding Filipinos who are victims of crimes stemming from drug addiction.
The upper house minority bloc, composed of six staunch critics of the president, will seek to restore the 678 million peso budget the government and a Senate sub-committee had proposed for the CHR.
Senator Risa Hontiveros described the plan to cut the budget to almost nil as “a shameless rejection of the country’s international and national commitments to champion human rights”.
Scrutinise
Several allies of Duterte in the 24-seat chamber said they would scrutinise the house move and try to ensure the commission had a budget that would allow it to work properly.
Senator Richard Gordon said the CHR had a job to do and should not be restricted.
“That is their role — to expose possible abuses,” he said.
Another legislator, JV Ejercito said senators would not make the CHR impotent.
“The CHR is in the thick of things and very relevant nowadays and probably even next year and the years to follow because of what’s happening,” he said in a statement.
Duterte once threatened to abolish the CHR after its chief, Chito Gascon, sought to investigate alleged abuses by police anti-drugs units.
Duterte on Tuesday appeared to distance himself from the lawmakers proposing the meagre budget. He said CHR was constitutionally created and should probe whatever it wants, adding he was “not here to destroy institutions”.
“He had it coming. He opens his mouth in a most inappropriate way. He knows nothing,” Duterte said, referring to Gascon.
“The congressmen are really angry. I have nothing against him. Give them a budget for all I care, whatever he likes to investigate.”
Duterte directly drew a link between Tuesday night’s vote to cut the Commission on Human Rights’ annual budget from 678 million pesos ($13 million) to 1,000 pesos and its investigations of the drug war killings and related criticism by its chairman.
“He had it coming,” Duterte told reporters late Tuesday, referring to commission chairman Jose Gascon.
Angry
“They only gave him 1,000 pesos (about $20) because Congress is angry.”
Duterte’s allies in the lower house’s justice committee on Wednesday also voted to impeach its chief justice after determining corruption allegations against her had substance.
The chief justice, Maria Lourdes Sereno, has been another critic of the drug war.
She wrote Duterte a letter last year expressing concern over him publicly naming seven judges as being involved in the drug trade, warning it made them vulnerable to being killed.
Duterte responded by threatening to declare martial law if Sereno continued to interfere in his drug war.
Should the entire house endorse the justice committee’s findings against Sereno, the Senate would convene as an impeachment court.
“This leads us on a direct path to dictatorship,” Senator Francis Pangilinan, leader of the Liberal Party, the country’s main opposition group, said in response to Tuesday’s vote.
Teodoro Casino, a former House member representing the left wing Bayan Muna party, expressed similar sentiments when commenting on the move against Sereno.
Also: MANILA, Philippines:
The Philippine president refused a demand by his most vocal critic to publicly release details of his bank accounts to disprove allegations that he had large sums of undeclared money.
President Rodrigo Duterte said in a news conference Wednesday that if opposition Sen Antonio Trillanes IV wanted “to get evidence, do not get it from my mouth. You must be stupid ... Why would I give you the pleasure?”
Trillanes first alleged Duterte had unexplained wealth during the presidential campaign last year. In February, he publicly raised the issue again because he said Duterte had not yet revealed details of the more than 2 billion pesos ($39 million) he allegedly kept in bank accounts as a former city mayor.
Duterte inadvertently brought the issue back to public focus recently when he alleged Trillanes has several undeclared joint bank accounts with unidentified Chinese men in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and the United States.
Trillanes denied it and signed about a dozen waivers for authorities to look into the alleged bank accounts and demanded that Duterte do the same.
Duterte went on a personal attack against Trillanes, one of his harshest critics and a former navy officer once detained for a failed coup plot.