IN ANOTHER celebrated case several members of a kidnap-for-ransom syndicate who victimised a businesswoman from Quezon City were all killed in an exchange of gunfire with police operatives led by then Davao City Police Chief Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa. In an on-the-spot interview with Bato, he told the media: “The order of the Mayor (Duterte) was shoot-to-kill if they will fight it out with the law”.
Years had elapsed CHR Chair De Lima became Secretary of Justice and was replaced by Etta Rosales. De Lima had spent over four months digging for what she claimed were common graves of EJK victims in Davao City. She found nothing except for a badly deteriorated and incomplete skeletal remains and three pairs of car license plates which were not even corroded. She presented her “evidence” before the Manila Trial Court Branch 34 which threw this out being inadmissible in court.
Later De Lima became Secretary of Justice but in her stint failed to indict Duterte. As Senator, she continued with her consuming desire to charge Djuterte on the issue of EJK. This time she and her new-found ally Sen. Antonio Trillanes, presented as witnesses Matobato and Laranas. Both alleged that they buried more than 1,200 EJK victims in an abandoned Laud quarry. It’s the same refrain told all over again only the figures had ballooned exponentially.
Speaking of Etta Rosales I remembered her screaming “this is murder!” when shown by ABS-CBN the video clip of the dead KFR members in that shootout with Bato’s men. She dubbed it as another case of EJK. Etta conveniently rehearsed what her predecessor Leila charged Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and this goes on with the incumbent Chair Chito Gaston who faults Duterte of EJK in every turn in domestic and international forums. After over a decade had elapsed when all the instrumentalities were virtually under their control, not a single complaint was filed against Duterte. Etta Rosales is back in the streets denouncing Duterte and cursing Marcos Martial law for what she went through in those days. In a reversal of fortune, De Lima is detained and facing trial in court confronted by witnesses too many to be ignored. Duterte’s critics dub her detention as political persecution. In the meantime her perjured witnesses have gone hiding abroad and I cannot help but wonder how they manage to survive. They are not legitimate OFWs but self-confessed guns-for-hire.
Any which way you look at these chronicle of events there is absolutely no doubt these sprung from dubious political agenda. President Duterte is correct in that the only crime he is being held accountable for is EJK. That had always been what he was and is being charged with by the Commission on Human Rights a repetition of unfounded allegations that had been compounded by an ignoramus Agnes Callamard who swallowed the EJK story conjured by De Lima and her ilks as biblical truth.
Indeed over a decade had elapsed. The EJK story is as farcical as the Davao Death Squad and the more than 1,200 EJK victims buried in the fertile minds of Duterte’s critics. Haven’t you noticed? The President is “Very Good” to the Filipino people according to the Social Weather Station.