No LP hand in video message to UN side session – Robredo legal adviser

The legal adviser of Vice President Leni Robredo on Tuesday denied that the Liberal Party (LP) had anything to do with her recorded speech for an international forum that tackled the administration’s drug war.

In a television interview, Barry Gutierrez reiterated that the video message must not be linked to the impeachment complaint filed against President Rodrigo Duterte last week or to alleged destabilization plots against him.

“No, LP had nothing to do with it (the video),” Gutierrez told ANC television. “She received a message requesting her to speak [about] human rights on the ongoing war on drugs in the Philippines. They (organizers) actually gave the topic.”

The LP, where the Vice President sits as interim chair and highest elected official, has been accused of plotting Duterte’s ouster, which its officials have repeatedly denied.

Some allies of the President, in particular House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, slammed Robredo for that speech, where she raised “irregularities” in the anti-drug campaign. The said video was played at a side session organized in line with the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs annual meeting last week. 

Alvarez has said he is eyeing an impeachment complaint against her because of this, on the grounds of betrayal of public trust. Two former senatorial aspirants and Marcos loyalists have presented an impeachment rap, seeking the Speaker’s endorsement, based on the same video.

Gutierrez, in turn, tagged those claims as “ridiculous” because the side session’s organizer, the UN-accredited DRCNet, made the request in February. Robredo’s office was able to give the speech that same month.

‘No intention to make President look bad’

He also noted that the video message wasn’t intended to be a direct attack against the President.

“I don’t think that was the intention. The intention was to focus on the particular issue on deck at that point, and that issue was specifically the human rights casualty on the war on drugs. And you know if you watch the entire thing, it’s clear that that’s what she’s talking about. She is citing figures, she is talking about what people who have direct experience with the war on drugs related to her in the meetings. So I don’t think there was any intention to make the President look back, or that was the clear direction of what was being said,” he said.

Gutierrez noted that if this was the “perception of some viewers,” it may be because Duterte “actually failed to distance himself from the ongoing concerns on the war on drugs.”

“He hasn’t really expressed a sense that he disapproves [of the killings], or that he is taking very, very firm steps to address the situation. In fact, he was quoted once to say that if he fails to accurately address this, you can expect the body count to triple,” he said. “You’re not really gonna be surprised that if people talk about the war on drugs, it is actually a criticism of the administration.”

‘Message, not report’

Amid criticisms that the recorded speech was “not detailed,” Gutierrez noted that she was asked “to give a message.”

“I appreciate that maybe it would have been better if there was a greater amount of detail, but remember, she was asked to give a message—a short, six-minute message. She was not there to report officially,” he said.

“If it was going to be an official report, there would be time and it would be better if you had the full set of statistics, and so on and so forth. But this was a message,” he added. 

In her speech, Robredo said more than 7,000 suspected drug offended have been “killed in summary executions” since Duterte began his drug war in July 2016. Some officials and private groups have called her out for it, insisting that only at least 2,000 people were killed in the police’s anti-drug operations.

Gutierrez said this have been used extensively by various organizations, and were culled from police statistics themselves. 

He also noted that under international law, the definition of summary executions includes not only police operations, but killings carried out by vigilante groups.

“Statistics show there are 4,500 unsolved murders … These are not something that you can just brush aside and say these are isolated incidents and so on. It demonstrates some kind of organization,” he said.

He added that Robredo was had some reluctance to go into detail was because of the people who came forward to her office with their stories. 

Gutierrez acknowledged that “there could have been certain clarifications inserted” in the said speech.

He noted, however that Robredo “did not say anything in the speech that was not true” and nothing that has not been said before.

“So to say that this particular speech put the Philippines in a bad light is a bit ridiculous, considering that the Philippines has been in a bad light precisely because of what has been happening,” he added.  — Rose-An Jessica Dioquino/RSJ, GMA News