Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano privilege speech at the Senate Session Hall Aug. 31, 2016. Lyn Rillon/Inquirer
Expressing hurt over international howl on the administration’s war on drugs, one of the President’s closest allies in the Senate on Wednesday sought a halt on bickering over the bloody anti-drug campaign while Mr. Duterte is on his first international trip as the country’s leader.
In a nearly hour-long privilege speech, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano asked the chamber for a break on the escalating verbal exchanges on the President’s drug war, which has received growing condemnation from the international community amid a piling body count.
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He also asked the Senate to see if it could reach a consensus on the suspension of hearings “that would put the President in a bad light” while he is on an international trip, a seeming reference to Sen. Leila de Lima’s ongoing inquiry into the spate of drug-related killings.
The President is set to undertake his first overseas trip, a three-nation swing through Laos, Brunei and Indonesia from September 4 to September 9.
“Maybe we can have a gentleman’s agreement, a gentlewoman’s agreement, when the President is abroad, let’s take care of other issues for the meantime,” he said, addressing his colleagues.
“Let us act as one in the Senate in deciding certain important matters like how do we help police in terms of giving them more equipment, giving them better pay, and maybe having (committee) chairs who do not have bias,” Cayetano said.
In a sweeping defense of the Duterte administration’s campaign, Cayetano, the President’s defeated running mate in the May elections, said he has been affected by how the drug campaign has been portrayed in international media.
He accused De Lima and the Commission on Human Rights of bias, saying they had already prejudged the President and the police on the matter of alleged extrajudicial slays.
De Lima, chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, was not at the Senate session yesterday as she fell ill in the afternoon, according to her staff. She had to cancel a committee meeting at 1 p.m.
“There is no national outrage on the drug war… But there is an international effort to discredit the Duterte administration,” Cayetano said.
Later, during interpellations, Cayetano asserted his point.
“It is consuming our national media, consuming the goodwill of the Philippines in the international media, that there is a spate of killings. But it’s not an accurate picture of what is happening in our streets,” said the lawmaker.
“I’m not saying there are no killings, but it’s not true that you’re not safe in the streets now,” he said.
He cited the difference in standards applied on categorizing killings during the Aquino and Duterte administrations, asserting statistics showing that there were 1,000 slain on average monthly under the previous leadership.
Cayetano also balked at how De Lima had lumped together all killings over the past month, which she placed at 2,000 in a CNN International interview- as attributable to the drug war.
“So all deaths are charged to Duterte?” said Cayetano.
“Just because Aquino (former President Benigno Aquino III) was calmer [and] more politically correct, [the killings during his time] did not make the front pages of newspapers around the world?” he said.
He compared the situation during the Aquino administration and today: “People feel safe. Before, people were scared of criminals. Now it’s the criminals who are scared.”
Cayetano also spliced into his presentation snippets of the President’s first State of the Nation Address, where he asserted that human rights “must work to uplift human dignity,” with the qualification that it “cannot be used as a shield or an excuse to destroy the country.” TVJ
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