RULE OF LAW, NOT MARTIAL LAW

President Rodrigo Duterte’s irrepressible critics are at it again, claiming that a de facto martial law is in existence as a result of the community quarantine period using the ridiculous proof that retired generals are running the show in the anticoronavirus campaign.

The yarn has been rolled out in time for the marking of the martial law declaration last Monday to generate relevance where there is none.

A fully functioning government with three independent branches and the frequent clashes that the President never interfered in, except in cases where the Executive is involved, do not support the authoritarian bias being leveled on the Chief Executive.

In many instances, Mr. Duterte failed to get what he wished for in Congress and the Supreme Court. This often ends up with the President resorting to his patented rant.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque who experienced the Marcos martial law said the situation under the Duterte administration is different from the 1972 military rule.

“I grew up under martial law, then took up law school under a government which only had a Constitution, as Congress and the Supreme Court were all shut down,” he said.

Roque instead said that like him most Filipinos have “learned the lessons of martial law,” which was what happened when the interim military rule was imposed on Mindanao in the aftermath of the Marawi City siege of 2017.

Contrary to what the detractors have been conjuring, the Mindanao martial law frustrated those shouting of authoritarian rule, since residents clamored for its extension even as the President sought its immediate lifting.

What appears to be the beef of the inconsolable foes in the red and yellow bands of the political spectrum is the incessant howling of press freedom violations from Rappler founder Maria Ressa, since she faces a string of cases involving breach of the anti-dummy law and a private person’s complaint of cyber libel, in which both are out of the

President’s hands.

Ressa, however, is winning big by constantly putting pressure on Mr.

Duterte by collecting accolades and awards from liberal democratic groups and their allies. She even landed on the cover of TIME magazine as a “Guardian in the War on Truth.”

To the communists and the liberals,

Mr. Duterte’s term is a reign of gross abuses on human rights, yet those who are shouting the loudest are enjoying such rights to the fullest.

Filipinos, nonetheless, continue to see a leader who is making the best out of what he has, to provide them with the best possible comfort.

There is also what is being labeled as the weaponization of the law against

Ressa, which can be interpreted as something good, since the opponents of Mr. Duterte believe that they are entitled to dictating on the people the type of governance they should enjoy.

Vice President Leni Robredo, the symbolic head of the yellows, kept on with her chatter about the yellow byword “revisionism,” which she claims is being cultivated under the current dispensation.

There is no such thing as a reshaping of history. What is actually transpiring is that the cold judgment of time had actually caught up with the made-up existence of the muckrakers.

Revisionism is altering the true lessons of history, which is what exactly the yellow mob and the red rebels are trying to foster on Filipinos, whose political maturity had resulted to the rejection of the critics’ stale shibboleths.

“There is no such thing as a reshaping of history. What is actually transpiring is that the cold judgment of time had actually caught up with the made-up existence of the muckrakers.

“A fully functioning government with three independent branches… do not support the authoritarian bias being leveled on the Chief Executive.