CHR’s gain
WHEN 119 members of the House of Representatives decided to give the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) a measly budget of P1,000 for 2018, the intention was to shame the said body and force its chair, Luis Martin “Chito” Gascon to resign. The move turned out to be a miserable failure.
Was the CHR shamed? No. Instead, it has come out smelling roses. It’s like when a man bullies a boy. Society always goes after the bully.
Before this, President Rodrigo Duterte and the so-called “Dutertards,” including their reps in Congress led by House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, had initially succeeded in demonizing the CHR and Gascon. They gained adherents from those who are so ignorant of the functions of the CHR and its reason for existence they fell for the lies and the twisted interpretations of the CHR’s acts that were being peddled.
The standard claim, that the CHR does not defend the rights of people victimized by drug addicts, followed by the muddled definition of the terms “crime” and “human rights violations,” did put the CHR on the defensive, especially in social media where the socalled Diehard Duterte Supporters (DDS) bloggers and trolls have a strong presence. In the Duterte Cabinet and among pro-Duterte politicians, the main purveyors of the anti-CHR trash were Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre and Al var ez.
The CHR and its supporters among the progressives and liberal-democrats (not to mention the “dilawans” or yellows) were actually only just beginning to respond at that time to the assault by clarifying the CHR mandate. But that effort, which included spreading that simplistic illustration of the CHR mandate online, was not aggressive enough. It was in this context that the House dared to give CHR the P1,000 bu dget .
But the tide turned after the House majority’s sordid act. The widespread condemnation was followed by an aggressive clarification of the CHR’s mandate and the reason the crafters of the 1987 Constitution made sure to include its creation there. What probably became a surprise for the House majority was that the virtues of the minority that opposed its sordid act were extolled while their immaturity, pettiness and childishness were roundly and widely exposed and condemned.
As for Gascon, he apparently gained more sympathizers and defenders. That I think has neutralized the twin attempts to demonize him as a “dilawan” and to ease him out of the CHR. The recent round of attacks on his person by Alvarez and his “chuwawaps” in the House and recently by the President no longer sounded compelling but pathetic. More than that, Alvarez and the House majority are increasingly being put on the defensive even by other lawmakers, including those in the Senate.
Interestingly, the issue fittingly capped weeks of condemnation of the killing of minors Kian delos Santos, Carlo Arnaiz and Reynaldo de Guzman (and the increasing number of extrajudicial killings in the country) contrasted with the linking of the so-called Davao group to the smuggling of P6.4 billion of shabu. In a way, the CHR issue rounded off the “firing up” of progressives and liberal democrats for Sept. 21.