CHR's Gascon: Noynoy admin's ‘major lapses’ won Duterte the presidency

Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Chairman Jose Luis "Chito" Gascon on Saturday said on Reddit that the administration of President Benigno Aquino III's "major lapses" paved the way for President Rodrigo Duterte's victory in the last elections.

Gascon, a former official of the Liberal Party, said in the "Ask Me Anything" thread in Reddit that one major lapse of the Aquino administration was its "failure to connect with the grassroots."

"...it was doing good things on a macro level, but was unable to both communicate and connect to the situation of ordinary people on the ground," Gascon said.

The CHR chairman was answering a netizen's question, "In your opinion, what were the major mistakes of LP and Aquino admin that led to a Duterte regime?"

"No government is ever perfect. And certainly the last Aquino administration had major lapses," he said.

Duterte overwhelmingly won the May 2016 presidential election over the Liberal Party's candidate, Mar Roxas.

Gascon also said that the Aquino administration's "inability to acknowledge fault with regards to key events affected public psyche."

He mentioned the Mamasapano incident, where 44 members of the police's elite Special Action Force were killed by Moro fighters during a mission to neutralize international terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan in Maguindanao province on Jan. 25, 2015.

Aquino gave the go signal to the mission and allowed then suspended Philippine National Police chief Alan Purisima to supervise the operation.

Gascon also cited the devastation of Super Typhoon Yolanda.

The Aquino administration was criticized for its failure to prepare for the super typhoon, which killed thousands of people. —ALG, GMA News