Former president Rodrigo Duterte (INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE)
MANILA, Philippines — Former president Rodrigo Duterte did not confirm his attendance to the next House of Representatives’ quad committee hearing on his administration’s war on drugs before it was cancelled, Surigao del Norte 2nd District Rep. Robert Ace Barbers said on Tuesday.
According to Barbers, quad committee lead presiding officer, they would have pushed through with the hearing originally scheduled on Wednesday, November 13, if only Duterte sent a confirmation.
Barbers earlier announced that they are rescheduling the quad committee hearing to November 21, due to the high number of testimonies that have to be verified before they are presented at the hearing.
Duterte’s supporters, however, took this as a sign that the quad committee was afraid of facing the former president.
“Well, if there is a confirmation like that, we will have to make do with the witnesses that we have already interviewed. But we did not receive any confirmation eh. So that’s why we decided yesterday that we have to cancel it,” Barbers explained.
“Because if we were informed (that Duterte will attend), we will push through. Never mind that we would only have a few witnesses to present, which is also good so that we will not hold a hearing up to the wee hours of the morning,” he added.
In addition, Barbers clarified that the supposed confirmation of Duterte’s attendance came from bloggers and vloggers supportive of the former president, and not from his legal counsel, former Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board chairperson Martin Delgra III.
“We were shocked, the fact is that we only found out from the social media that our former president confirmed his attendance — although this did not come from the former president, but from vloggers. I don’t know, who should we believe in? As far as the records of the quad committee is concerned, the counsel, the lawyer representing the former president is Atty. Delgra,” Barbers said.
“So we only listen to those who have formally entered their appearance before the quad comm or those that are representing our resource persons, and have informed the committee,” he added.
Earlier, Barbers also said that the chairpersons of the four panels have been contemplating since last week about the cancellation of the hearing.
He, however, admitted that they only made a decision on Monday night, informing resource persons that the next hearing would be held on November 21.
“And because there are so many resource persons, many want to testify, we think we really need to study whom we would invite for the discussions on extrajudicial killings, on the illegal drugs, and on Philippine offshore gaming operators […] That’s why we decided yesterday that we would cancel our meeting, supposedly for tomorrow, November 13, to give us more time up to next Thursday to interview, to set up our agenda, and to finish all our interviews,” he added.
The clarification came after bloggers supporting the former president called out the quad committee for canceling its hearing just as the former leader was supposed to participate.
The blog of Mocha Uson, a former assistant secretary during the Duterte administration, even accused the quad committee of suddenly being afraid.
Barbers, meanwhile, said that there are many quad committee hearings in the future that Duterte can attend — stressing that this is not the first time that the former president was invited to be present during the discussions.
“But you know, there are more hearings and we will expect that the former president will still attend. Because this is the request of our colleagues in the quad comm. So this is not the first and the last,” he pointed out.
“This is actually the fifth, or not only the fifth invitation where the former president failed to attend,” he added.
Duterte’s drug war has been one of the major topics of the quad committee hearings, especially after revelations from retired police colonel Royina Garma, about the existence of a rewards system in the drug war.
According to Garma, Duterte called her in 2016 about the creation of a task force which will implement the so-called Davao template on a nationwide scale.
The Davao template, Garma said, involved providing cash grants worth P20,000 to P1 million to cops who kill drug suspects.
Garma also claimed the existence of the Davao Death Squad — a team that former president Duterte supposedly formed.
At a Senate hearing last October 28, Duterte said he created a seven-man hit squad made up of gangsters when he was Davao City mayor, but eventually retracted it when senators asked for a clarification.