đź“·Former US President Donald Trump and ex-Pres. Rodrigo Duterte |washingtonpost
The conviction of Donald Trump on all 34 counts of falsification of business records in the hush money case in New York state after a seven-week trial should encourage the families of the 30,000 victims of summary killings in the purported “war against drugs” and thousands of ordinary folk, members of indigenous peoples (IPs) and activists killed in the course of his other war against progressives to pursue their case against ex-president Rodrigo Duterte not only before the International Criminal Court (ICC) but in Philippine courts and other jurisdictions as well.
Trump’s conviction bares in horrid detail his cavalier attitude about the law and his insistence that he has immunity from suit for official acts during his incumbency and beyond, a stupid assertion that reveals he does not has only bad lawyers but also ignorant defenders. Monitoring the Trump trial, it appears that his defense panel committed the error of listening too much to their client, who also wanted to micromanage his defense as if he were his own counsel.
His lawyers were scared of his solipsism, and refused to invoke hornbook doctrines on evidence, procedures and the law and preferred to accede to every wish of their convicted client. In short, they played to his misogynism, his irrationality and his lack of common sense, all of which confirm his anti-social narcissistic personality disorder (ANPD.) These lawyers practically refused to abide by their professional duties and allowed their stiffing, grifting and lying client to lead them by the nose, thumbing down their lines of defense in exchange for chump change. No wonder more sensible attorneys quit Trump’s cases and announced to the entire world that there was no sense defending Trump.
Trump and Duterte are peas in a pod. Both are misogynists, womanizers and ruthlessly enamored with cash. Trump made a pile of cash while he was president, colluded with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to weaken NATO and did not believe the US intelligence community. On the other hand, Duterte, who should have considered himself damn lucky after the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague squashed China’s “historic claims” over Panatag Shoal 12 days into his incumbency, instead trashed the more than 800-page decision on a case filed by President Benigno Aquino III and said “it was merely a piece of paper.” You have these two ex-presidents working against their national interests.
In the case of Duterte, his perorating against the Philippine’s judicial triumph was “ipso facto” a betrayal of the national interest. In more sensible countries, Duterte’s tack was treasonous. For Trump, like Duterte, everything was transactional. Thus, the transactional nature of the bloody “war vs drugs,” with him promising to back policemen shooting down “suspected drug pushers” only to turn his back on them, arguing that only those who can justify their murderous acts would not be thrown under the bus.
A few convictions would have slowed down the killings but in Dutertistan, nothing’s changed, with at least seven suspected “drug pushers” killed by the cops of Davao City Mayor Sebastian “Baste” Duterte recently. This prompted the sacking of the entire leadership of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in the city, and Baste wailed like a banshee, the way his father did when his security detail was reassigned after reports filtered in that Digong was using his escorts to harass political opponents. Digong, Baste and Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio are cut from the same cloth. Kick out their Praetorian guard and they become helpless chicken. Strip them of their confidential and intelligence funds (CIFs) and they howl that they are being persecuted for having funds they are not entitled to.
Of, many Americans are celebrating the conviction of Trump as his mentor, the late lawyer Roy Cohn, was no longer around to help him, a victim of AIDS in 1986 after having numerous affairs with men since the time he sent Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs to the electric chair in what had been dubbed as one of the worst kangaroo trials in the annals of US jurisprudence. They were convicted on the Manhattan Project espionage case in the 1950s that was the handiwork of a Jewish family that had relocated to Russia as revealed in their book and confirmed by the KGB archives. The Rosenberg kids now demand restitution, which should also be the demand of the many Duterte victims.
Not one member of the many Davao Death Squad (DDS) teams has ever been arrested and put to trial despite the revelations of former Duterte hitmen. These are the killers who have been responsible for the killings of 4,000 people in Davao, some of them minors and members of street corner gangs, the waifs that the Dutertes regard as eyesores in their little bit of Paradise. For the government of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., there is no longer any hindrance for the Dutertes to be haled into court for the mass executions from 2016 to 2022. Neither is there any reason for the Palace to dither on its responsibility to yield Duterte to the custody of the ICC. All the acts committed by him and his relatives and cohorts happened before he withdrew from the Rome Statute. In short, his bogus legal claim that the Philippines is no longer covered by its treaty commitment cannot skewer the boilerplate doctrine that created the ICC. (DIEGO MORA)
