The acrobatics of Harry Roque
Ifully agree with former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay that presidential spokesman Harry Roque looks pathetic after the latter abandoned his intellectual honesty and his principles as a U.P professor in his search for glory and power.
I had been an ardent admirer of Harry Roque who had been known for his international law expertise and human rights advocacy. I was impressed with Roque’s legal knowledge and eloquence. No wonder I considered myself fortunate for having known him personally when, together, we shared our commitments in working against the graft-ridden Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration.
I vividly remember the day in June 2010, a few weeks after the victory of LP presidential candidate Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. Harry invited me, my wife and Dean Jonathan Capanas of USJ-R to a merienda in one of the restaurants in Cebu City.
In that meeting, he requested us to sign a prepared endorsement addressed to the new president-elect, urging him to appoint him as Secretary of Justice. We gave our imprimatur to his request because we were impressed by his academic credentials aside from his numerous achievements as a legal scholar and his advocacy for human rights.
Harry Roque did not make it because President Aquino appointed Leila de Lima as his Secretary of Justice, a decision that was well received by the nation because of Secretary de Lima’s no-nonsense crusade against corruption. Her first decisive act was in preventing former president Gloria M. Arroyo from taking flight outside of the country because of her impending warrant of arrest.
I was one of those erstwhile admirers of Harry Roque who was greatly dismayed and disappointed when he accepted the job as presidential spokesman of Rodrigo Duterte. As mouthpiece of the president, Mr. Roque had to make somersaults from his previous positions to defend the indefensible which makes him the laughingstock of the nation.
For instance, during the time of the Aquino administration, he congratulated the former president and the then Philippine Senate for their acts in making the country a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Now, with the unilateral act of President Duterte in withdrawing from the country’s membership of the ICC ostensibly due to his being accused before the ICC of crimes against humanity, Harry Roque lambasted the ICC, a 360-degree turn from his previous stand. Listening to his lies and absurdities reminds me of Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of the Third Reich.
Harry Roque speaks with a forked tongue on varied issues like human rights, misogynism, and Duterte’s waltzing with the family of the dictator Marcos and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo which makes him all the more pathetic. I share the striking question of former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay that he addressed to his friend Harry Roque: “How can anyone ever take you seriously after this administration?”
But people who like Faustus of olden times sold their souls to the devil do not care about honor and reputation even if they will be damned perpetually. – Democrito C. Barcenas