Duterte would never use anti-terror law to suppress dissent —Roque

President Rodrigo Duterte will not use the Anti-Terrorism law to crackdown on protesters, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque, Jr. said Thursday, when the 12th petition against the new law was filed before the Supreme Court.

“The President is a lawyer, and he has been in office for four years. I don’t think anybody can claim that he is one that would clamp down on [protest] gatherings,” Roque said in a press conference.

Those who oppose the law argue that it does not have enough safeguards against abuses of enforcement authorities

Groups behind the 12th petition –composed of lawmakers, some framers of the 1987 Constitution, lawyers, human rights defenders, among others –contend that the new law has lots of rooms for abuse.

While the law exempts "advocacy, protest, dissent, stoppage of work, industrial or mass action, and other similar exercises of civil and political rights" from the definition of terrorism, the petitioners pointed out that such acts may be punished when "intended to cause death or serious physical harm to a person, to endanger a person's life, or to create a serious risk to public safety," they said in their petition.

Also, Section 29 of the law does not contain the safeguard that was found in the Human Security Act, the law it replaced, where warrantless arrests were "legally possible" only if they resulted from court-ordered surveillance and examination of  the suspects' bank deposits.

Likewise, they pointed out that the law authorizes the Anti-Terrorism Council, a body composed of executive officials, to authorize the detention of persons arrested without a warrant for up to 24 days without filing charges in court.

In addition, the new law removed the P500,000 a day penalty on police officers who will detain suspects eventually acquitted of the crime provided under the Human Security Act.

But Roque insisted that  petitioners' fear of repression is unfounded, saying that protests held against Anti-Terrorism law had gone unhampered, including the one that coincided with the Philippine Independence Day last June 12 and held inside the UP Diliman campus.

He also cited the agreement reached between protesters and the Quezon City government allowing the staging of protest actions in time with the President’s fifth State of the Nation Address on Monday, July 27.

“That [development] shows the administration’s commitment to right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” he pointed out. 

Roque also allayed fears on the law’s provision criminalizing the act inciting terrorism through speeches, proclamations, writings, emblems, banners, or other representations of dissent.

“There are many jurisprudence on this, that there should be clear and present danger. Under jurisprudence, the person speaking must have the capacity to do what he is inciting others to do,” Roque said.

“Otherwise, it is [an exercise of] freedom of expression. If the one speaking is a member of the Abu Sayyaf who is armed, then there is clear and present danger,” he added.

The 1987 Constitution states that "no law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances." —LBG, GMA News