Duterte’s threat to jail those who refuse vaccination lacks legal basis — lawyers’ groups

Lawyers’ groups on Wednesday criticized President Rodrigo Duterte’s latest pronouncement that those who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19 will be put in jail.

Both Integrated Bar of the Philippines president Domingo Cayosa and Philippine Bar Association chief Rico Domingo said Duterte’s threat had no legal basis.

“There is no law as yet punishing refusal to be vaccinated, therefore there is no legal basis for the arrest,” Cayosa said in a message to reporters.

Domingo said Duterte should know about the legalities given his background as a lawyer and a former prosecutor.

“We are in a democratic system and any draconian measure would certainly imperil the constitutional rights of the people,” he said in a radio interview.

“It is clearly infirm and without a valid constitutional or legal basis. There is no law that specifically empowers the President to order such arrests for said reasons even in this health emergency,” added National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers president Edre Olalia in a statement.

Olalia said no one should be arrested or penalized and even forcibly subjected to “an involuntary act contrary to her/his preference and option, regardless whether such refusal or hesitancy is valid, unreasonable or even misinformed.”

“The autonomy of one’s anatomy in this specific situation must be respected and no ruler can validly impose or force it,” he said.

According to Domingo, the government has other alternatives to boost vaccine uptake.

“Right now, I think there are a lot of alternatives we can do; one of them is public education and provision of adequate supply for the vaccination,” he said.

Lawyers in the Duterte government have offered contrasting interpretations of the President’s controversial remarks on Monday. 

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said there is no law on mandatory vaccination, let alone criminalizing the act of refusing to get the vaccine. 

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said a law is needed to punish those who refuse to get the vaccine, while Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo opined that Duterte’s order has a constitutional basis.

“Constitutional provisions on public health, by themselves, are operative and need no subsequent legislation for their enforcement,” Panelo said.