By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

TODAY, I watched Karen Davila interview Maria Lourdes Sereno, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who was impeached under the Duterte administration for failing to submit her Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) during her 17-year tenure as a professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law. This issue became the primary legal ground for her controversial removal as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines in 2018 through a quo warranto petition. Before her impeachment, she openly expressed criticism on Duterte’s drug war, and this, to most political analysts, is the real reason for rendering her appointment as chief justice, null and void.

Before Sereno, in 2017, then Senator Leila de Lima was arrested under charges linked to the New Bilibid Prison drug trafficking scandal during her term as Secretary of Justice. Leila de Lima was the Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo serving for two years (2008 to 2010) marked by high-profile cases such as the Davao Death Squad, human rights cases against General Jovito Palparan and the Maguindanao massacre in 2009. According to sources, her arrest, while she was already a member of the Senate of the Philippines, was fueled by her investigation of the Davao Death Squad (DDS), Duterte’s template for his War of Drugs. She was released after six years in detention, and now serves as a sectoral representative of the Mamamayang Liberal party list.

In addition to this, I came across a message posted by FB friend Alex Allan: “Eight years ago Duterte ordered then Vice President Leni Robredo to stop attending cabinet meetings, cowardly issuing the order through cabinet secretary Jun Evasco. Leni is now the mayor of Naga City while Duterte is in prison 10,400 kilometers away in The Hague.

(Photo of cellphone message by Barry Gutierrez.)” From CabSec Jun, the message read:

“Gd afternoon Madam Vice

President. Mayor Rudy Duterte thru Bong

Go asked me to relay to you his 

instruction for you to desist

from attending all cabinet

mtngs starting

This Monday Dec 5, 2pm. Ty.”

 

This is how swiftly you can be removed or sidelined, even while doing your job well, during the time of Duterte. There was no democratic space, and those who used to be very vocal against any kind of oppression, especially women’s oppression, fell silent. Senator Loren Legarda was silent. Senator Pia Cayetano was silent. The other senators swallowed their tongues or licked the President’s ass. In my late mother’s words: “Period. Awan sao!” (Translation: “Period. Stop talking!”) That’s an admonition, more a threat, from my mom, who hardly talks about politics, but expressed her repulsion at the subservient behavior of the legislators.

But that’s not all. In February 2018, former President Rodrigo Duterte, referring to female communist rebels, told soldiers to “shoot in the vagina” to render them “useless”.  His audience laughed. Public behavior was disturbing. In doing all these acts against women, the infrastructure for dehumanization, impunity and disinformation was reinforced. The public nurtured this dynamics by laughing, or by silence. As I’ve written before, “By being silent, we became complicit in the eventual elevation of subservience, falsehood and impunity as the new acceptable norm. If we are not disturbed, or cannot be burdened by speaking out, we deserve, totally deserve, to drown in our own blood.” Drown, as well, in the uncontrolled flood.