Duterte, according to Roque

Jude Josue Sabio .

DUTERTE is a “self-professed murderer.” This was what Harry Rogue uttered before he became Duterte’s spokesman. Don’t vote for him because the right to life is the most important — that was Roque’s rebuke of Duterte.

These utterances were consistent with what Matobato and Lascanas said about Duterte as allegedly being the mastermind of the Davao Death Squad.  What is more revealing is that such utterances came also directly from the horse’s mouth: Duterte himself admitted that he is a killer.

Roque must have a factual basis or reason for his utterances. This could arise from Duterte’s previous pronouncements of admission, which explains why Roque chose to use the word “self-professed,” giving the indelible impression that it has come from Duterte himself.

Roque’s assertion is critically damaging to Duterte in the ICC, principally because it comes from his lawyer. In the ICC, his various pronouncements are being used as admission to support the theory that he merely continued in the war on drugs his system of death squad killings in Davao.

By way of adoption of the words of John Cooke, the shabby lawyer who prosecuted King Charles I of England in 1649, Duterte is the “author, occasioner and author” of the system of death squad killings.

Roque brings back to mind the situation of President Ceaucescu of Romania who was put on trial during the revolution. His appointed defense lawyer denounced him during the trial as guilty of genocide and he was executed. Roque already did such denunciation when he had labelled Duterte a “self-professed murderer.”

Under haughty pretensions of being a human rights lawyer, Roque has thrown all ethical pretensions to the wind and has been loudly defending Duterte. He even stood up before the ICC Assembly of State Parties, castigating such assembly, all for the sake of defending his “self-professed murderer.”

Roque even boasted to be the only Philippine lawyer allowed to practice in the ICC. Now, he deserves the contempt of his peers as the only such lawyer who is defending in the ICC a person whom he has denounced to be a self-professed murderer.

Roque’s boast is empty. Since legal business in the ICC is only once in a blue moon, just like the case of Duterte, lawyers have no professional motivation to practice law in the ICC. Roque is a lawyer working mostly in the academe who busies himself with purely academic matters, boasting of his masters degree that means nothing to actual law practice.

Being a contemporary of Roque in the UP College of Law, I personally know him to be a law student with lackluster performance having no record of excellence in academics, forensics or anything of true value in law school. He did not even manage to be part of the prestigious Jessup International Law Moot Court Team of the UP College of Law.

As if later to redeem himself, he has consciously pretended to be a human rights lawyer with a pseudo-expertise in international law that does not ordinarily feature in litigations in Philippine courts.

Indeed, Roque is nothing but a pseudo-practicing lawyer who just happens to have a loud mouth acting as a puppet to his blabbering political master with alleged mass murder credentials.

Duterte and Roque are just two sides of the same coin. Duterte, according to Roque, is the self-professed murderer while Roque himself is the ideal personification of Judas Iscariot as exemplified by the swapping of his ethical pretensions in exchange for what Malacañang has to offer.

To me, both of them are devoid of any ethics, loathsome, and despicable. Like a coin tossed in the air, both of them will fall down clattering to the floor when gravity like retribution pulls them inexorably to the ground, and justice will prevail over them.

(The author is a lawyer from Misamis Oriental who filed a complaint against President Duterte before the International Criminal Court.)