Manufactured malice

THEY called Mocha the queen of fake news, even as Inquirer, ABSCBN and Rappler propagated the lie that the high index of impunity for 2017 is President Duterte’s fault even if it was computed using data collected during the term of his predecessor.

Theirs is what appears to be manufactured malice, one that subsists on hypocrisy, double standards and holier-than-thou attitudes.

It is seen in one who fights for human rights and volunteers his time for rehabilitating drug dependents, but who has a history of patronizing women. Or one who lectures on the abuses of martial law, but keeps on posting abusive language against Duterte and Marcos supporters.

It is just too easy to live up to the moral nature of a human being. After all, we are all moral agents capable of knowing the good from the bad, and discerning the right from the wrong. Unfortunately, malice can get the better of us and turn us into hypocrites unable to practice what we preach.

- man rights, yet are incapable of respecting the fundamental right of persons to have an independent mind and an autonomous voice.

There are people who are at the forefront of human rights advocacy. They organize and animate civil society actors towards their preferred narratives. They conduct seminars and civic formation activities to inculcate among their publics the fundamental premises of their untiring advocacies against the so-called extra-judicial killings, and against President Duterte.

They speak of the right to life, and stand up against tyranny. They call attention to the fears of a return to the dark days of a dictatorship that they now associate with a demonized surname. They cry at what they perceive as the silencing of voices of resistance like that of Leila de Lima, or of Chief Justice Meilou Sereno, or the absence of due process with regard to the poor drug suspects who they believe are summarily executed by a state that