By John Victor D. Ordoñez, Reporter
THE CHIEF of the Philippine police’s investigation arm has filed a complaint for inciting to sedition against former President Rodrigo R. Duterte over his kill remarks against sitting senators.
Brigadier General Nicolas D. Torre III, head of the police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), said he filed the case against the tough-talking leader at the Department of Justice (DoJ) as CIDG chief and as a citizen “to make sure that we protect the citizenry from criminal activities like this.”
At the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino Laban (PDP-Laban) proclamation rally in Manila last week, Mr. Duterte suggested killing incumbent senators in a bomb blast to make room for his preferred candidates.
Former presidential legal counsel Salvador S. Panelo called the complaint “foolish,” saying Mr. Duterte was just joking.
“Unlike Torre, the senators have the common sense and the humor to see the Duterte joke as an amusing and laughable remark,” he told reporters in a Viber group message.
But Mr. Torre said the ex-President’s remarks are inexcusable.
“This is a new Philippines,” he told reporters in mixed English and Filipino, based on a voice recording sent to reporters via Viber. “These kinds of statements that are passed off as jokes the next morning are no longer allowed.”
He said the complaint would be used to build a criminal case against the Mr. Duterte.
Under a 2023 DoJ circular, government prosecutors must only file cases that would lead to a “reasonable certainty of conviction” instead of a previous requirement of finding “probable cause.”
Lawmakers have called on the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to probe his remarks.
Last week, the NBI filed a complaint for inciting to sedition and grave threats against the former President’s daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio, over her statement last year threatening to have Philippine President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., his wife and cousin Speaker Martin G. Romualdez assassinated.
“The challenge to our institutions is to clearly respond to whether they abet this, or whether they should finally be made liable for it on political and constitutional law standards,” Hansley A. Juliano, who teaches political science at the Ateneo de Manila University, said in a Facebook Messenger chat.
“This happened before already, right?” Mr. Torre said. “He said that some people — addicts — should be killed. And it happened. There was a lot of killing,” he added, referring to the ex-President’s deadly drug war.
The government estimates that at least 6,117 people died in Mr. Duterte’s anti-illegal drug campaign between July 1, 2016 and May 31, 2022, but human rights groups say the death toll could be as high as 30,000.
“There is a basis to investigate Rodrigo Duterte,” Ephraim B. Cortez, president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, said in a Viber message. “In this case, he proposed to kill the senatorial candidates through the use of a bomb.”
“Killing or inflicting bodily harm on a group of persons is an element of sedition, and using a bomb indicates the tumultuous nature of what he planned to do. It’s time to hold him accountable for this kind of remark,” he added.
