The Problem Of PNoys Appealing To Leila Dilemma's Awards From Foreign Organizations

This is another call for Filipinos to be careful about appealing to foreign awards. While I have nothing against international awards in general but there's also some thing about certain foreign agencies. It gave me a thought on her award by LIBERAL International where the Liberal Party of the Philippines is obviously part of. Leila Dilemma given a human rights award. Who else would give award to a liberal but a liberal right?

From Get Real Philippines, as much as I've been reading Time Magazine but I can't help suspect that there's some matrix between the Liberal Party and some foreign allies. Maybe, even that old hag Loida Nicolas Lewis is also involved. Here's what the article says:

Power did not even bother to know the facts about the cases against De Lima. She also had the nerve to imply that De Lima’s colleagues in the Senate were in cahoots with Duterte and not acting independently when they stripped De Lima of her committee chairmanship. Never mind that De Lima was abusing her power in the Senate by turning the Senate hearing into a witch-hunt and focusing on Duterte’s alleged role in the vigilante group the Davao Death Squad while he was still City Mayor there.

The focus of the Senate hearing then was supposed to be on the alleged extra-judicial killings (EJKs) relating to the government’s war on drugs, but De Lima took the opportunity to lambast Duterte in front of the media. That did not sit well with the other senators because De Lima came across like she simply had an axe to grind for her failure to prosecute Duterte when she was the Department of Justice Secretary under the Aquino government and even earlier when she was still the head of the Human Rights Commission during the Arroyo government.

Power’s write-up was disturbing because it was obvious that she only based its message on one side of the story – De Lima’s side. Power wanted to paint a picture of a lawless Philippines under Duterte. She mentioned “some 7000 people were killed” in the drug war as if all these deaths were government-sanctioned. She wanted De Lima to look like a political prisoner whose only crime was to criticise Duterte. Power does not have respect for the members of Philippine criminal justice system, which includes the law enforcement agencies and the court judges who work on De Lima’s prosecution.

Power is not only showing her ignorance of Philippine politics, she is also showing her superiority complex. She probably thinks that only the Western system of delivering “justice” is acceptable. To be fair, Filipino politicians have a track record of persecuting those not allied with them when they are in power. Even former allies get thrown under the bus as soon as they fall out of favour. This was very evident during former President Benigno Simeon Aquino’s term. As a matter of fact, De Lima played a big role in detaining Aquino’s political enemy former President Gloria Arroyo for five years even when she was sick. Power should have asked celebrity and international human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney about the time De Lima denied Arroyo her right to travel and her right to presumption of innocence back in 2011. I wrote about it several times in the past. It’s still worth highlighting now:

While I'm not anti-Western but there are times I'm tempted to be even if I enjoy the benefits of westernization. I could agree with what Ilda of GRP said about Samantha Power's ignorance. This is a one sided scenario. Did she even go to the Philippines to see the scenario herself before reacting? Did she even bother to investigate the allegations against Dilemma? I doubt it. Worse, does she have even any proof that Dilemma's statements were real?

Later, I read this GRP article on giving awards for inconsistency for Duterte's unfair critics:

Speaking of awards, Senator Leila De Lima who is currently detained for drug related charges was recently given the “highest human rights honour” – a prize for Freedom by the Liberal International (LI) during their 199th Executive Committee meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa. The committee is said to be championing De Lima as “a flag-bearer for human rights in the Philippines and beyond, setting a shining example for other human rights defenders”. That’s ironic considering De Lima has been a failure during her stint as Chair of Commission on Human Rights during former President Gloria Arroyo’s term. She was in a position to hold Duterte accountable for the crimes she accuses him of, but she failed to do so. Why couldn’t she speak out against Duterte during BS Aquino’s term? Was it because the Liberal Party needed Duterte’s help to win? Now that Duterte is the President and consequently defeated the Liberal Party in the Presidential Election, she is very vocal against him.

Members of Liberal International should look deeper and do their own investigation into De Lima’s dark past instead of believing everything she is saying. As what I wrote before in a previous article, De Lima was Department of Justice Secretary for six years but did not stop or was too incompetent and, possibly, too corrupt to stop the debauchery that went on inside the national penitentiary with drug lords using the prison as hotel and running their drug operation inside. She allowed that to happen and is therefore, complicit in proliferation of drugs in the country. She needs to answer for that.

No, De Lima doesn’t deserve the “highest human rights honour” particularly since she herself denied another human being’s right to presumption of innocence and right to travel abroad when she detained former President Gloria Arroyo even when the trumped up charges against her were still being concocted. We all know that the charges against Arroyo were eventually dropped and dismissed, but that was after she spent five years in detention. De Lima even ignored the United Nation’s ruling won by International Human Rights lawyer Amal Alumuddin-Clooney to free Arroyo and give her compensation for being a victim of political persecution under the Aquino government. De Lima is definitely not a victim of political persecution like Arroyo. De Lima is a victim of her own indiscretions.

Another member of the Opposition that got a consolation prize is online news site Rappler. US-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) recently gave the site their highest honour – the W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award or whatever that means. According to NDI, Rappler “has suffered threats and severe internal pressure for its pioneering work in exposing disinformation and propaganda in the Philippines to manipulate public opinion”. I know what you’re thinking. Some of you are probably laughing out loud over this. This has got to be the most ridiculous justification for giving an award. It reeks of propaganda. Has NDI or even Rappler actually identified those who threatened or put pressure on them? They should receive an award for fiction instead.

Rappler cannot claim to be a victim of threats and pressure if they are simply reporting news. The problem with Rappler is they also publish opinions of mostly staunch Liberal Party supporters. They cannot claim to be non-partisan. They are also into sensationalism – highlighting negative issues against the current government. This is why a lot of their readers have turned against them. They cannot blame the backlash from the public on Duterte. Rappler’s award from the NDI is simply a mutual back-patting exercise. They are people who hold the same liberal views. It’s not surprising the organisation would support Rappler‘s so-called “liberal” ideas. Just because they say the Duterte government’s policy on drugs includes extra-judicial killings doesn’t mean it is true. Only a court can determine if the deaths were due to extra-judicial killings after a thorough investigation was conducted, not before.

Here's also the problem with Liberal International. Do they EVEN know the full story or are they just relying on Dilemma's theatrics? I agree with what GRP has to say that Liberal International should get a closer picture. Instead, because the Liberal Party of the Philippines is under then then this could be a case of giving awards for biases. While there's nothing wrong with giving awards but sometimes certain awards were not worked for but paid for or only because of partisan policies. The Philippines isn't alone in practicing partisan policies and selectivity.

I guess as inappropriate as it is for President Duterte to cuss at certain foreign organizations but I can still sympathize with him. For years, the Philippines allowed itself to be bullied and/or enslaved by foreigners who can't even fix their own problems in their respective home countries. I guess these organizations back up Dilemma because she's a staunch critic of President Duterte. President Duterte doesn't want the Philippines to be continuously bullied by such useless foreign organizations that meddle in others' affairs all the while they can't even clean their own yard. 

It's time for Filipino political scientists who have the data on Dilemma to show what she really is and the cover that was blown. This may also help expose the hypocrisy of those foreign organizations and how they bully weaker countries to cover up their insecurities. It's going to be a long, hard battle especially the Philippines' had been fed with PNoy Pride in the education system for three decades already. 

On the other hand, if the Liberal Party bribed the organization for Dilemma's award (this is just my assumption) then that would be good news. The more the Liberal Party pays foreign organizations to help them out the more they run out of money. I don't think Liberal International would give such a huge honor to a dishonorable person for such a small fee. If they're actually bribing these organizations that will make you honorable for a fee then think of how much money they're going to run out. At the same time, it could also be used against them for wasting the Philippines' money for their own selfish purposes.