Can Roque defend killings and human rights at the same time?
IT'S President Duterte’s right to change his spokesman. Following the recent two-digit slide in his trust and satisfaction ratings, some key aides were inevitably blamed, including presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella. Duterte was quoted as saying that Abella’s replacement, Kabayan Party-list Rep.
Harry Roque, is “playful” like him. Roque is tough-talking and plays hardball while Abella, as a former church minister, tends to use the soft touch. Often, Abella tried to protect the presidency from fallouts of what Duterte said. It’s also Roque’s right to accept the position.
He’s apparently keeping his political career in mind. The position of presidential spokesman assures him of high visibility in the run for the 2019 senators election. He doesn’t have to scramble anymore to get, words and mug shot, into prime-time news.
Still, it’s odd that Roque, who holds the title, if nominal, of House deputy minority leader, would speak, starting Nov. 6, for the ruling party’s chief.
Bizarre and incongruous is the situation where Roque, vaunted defender of human rights and justice, would now shield Duterte who has been accused, unfairly or not, here and abroad, of waging a deadly illegal drugs campaign.
But then his critics say that Roque had for some time already abandoned his democratic and human rights stance: He voted for martial law’s extension.
Backed the near-zero budget of Commission on Human Rights. Pushed for a panel to investigate Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales. Declared that the law on human rights and Duterte’s drug policies are the same. Roque would just be ending the charade and the sham, as one congressman put it.
The Bertha Justice Network, a pool of 14 human rights international groups, urged Roque “to stand on the right side of the struggle.” Too late, silly, critics point out, he has long shifted lanes, switched sides.
What mystifies or simply confuses is Roque’s intentions as presidential spokesman. He would defend Duterte and his policies and yet he would remain steadfast to his advocacy in individual liberties. *He has accepted the job, he said, to to get “an audience” with the president, by which he intends to advise Duterte on human rights.
Really? Duterte called then US president Obama and European Union leaders sons of whores and the former Colombian president an idiot when they suggested that his methods in the drug war were wrong. Maybe because they were outsiders meddling with our affairs. Could Roque, even from inside, do better? Could he “reI form” the views of his boss? *Roque plans to eliminate or reduce public perception, here and abroad, that the administration sponsors the illegal killings or, worse, a genocide. He thinks the people can be persuaded to focus on the state’s “fundamental position” on the drug problem and not on the way Duterte stated it. He also intends to reduce “the impact” on the world perception that the state supports genocide from the president’s pronouncements.
opinion In sum, Roque plans to overhaul how the nation and the world regard Duterte’s human rights record. A mammoth image-change undertaking. But how? If it would be a makeover in spokesperson’s style, it would mean from Abella’s explaining or correcting Duterte’s statements, to Roque’s toughening it out, doubling down on what the president says: no rectification or apology.
Or maybe Roque may try at avoiding post-crisis control by averting the crisis. But that requires changing Duterte’s views, or at least his public views, on the controversial issue. Which suggests Duterte would say one thing for public consumption and doing another in actuality.
Meaning he would be duplicitous. Unless by Roque’s advice, Duterte would be converted into a human rights adherent, if not advocate. Ticket to Senate Well, good luck on whatever Roque has really in mind. More immediate success for him must be his ticket to a sojourn that dangles as reward a household name and, perhaps at last, a Senate seat. SSCebu