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Batas Mauricio .

IS there any truth to the accusations about the supposed alliance between drug syndicates and human rights groups which have been openly assailing the President Duterte’s campaign against illegal drugs? And is it true that the intention of those opposing the President’s campaign is simply to bring down the Duterte government?

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These are serious and grave accusations, to say the least, and should not have been lightly bandied about by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Authority and by the Philippine National Police, if they didn’t have sufficient proof to back them up. These did not only destroy reputations of human rights advocates, who are mostly lawyers, but even put their very lives at risk.

Because of this, I am proposing a challenge: the PNP and PDEA should now publicly disclose whatever proof they might have about the claimed alliances between drug syndicates human rights groups. If they cannot come up with these proofs at this point, it would do well for the interest of truth for these accusations to cease, particularly those being aired in media.

Under Philippine law and jurisprudence, mere accusation is not considered as evidence. According to countless decisions of the Supreme Court, any accusation or allegation of the commission of an offense must have to be backed up by sufficient proof, independent of the mere say-so of the complainant or of his witnesses.

And if criminal accusations are founded only on mere salivary assertions of supposed witnesses, the high tribunal has already ruled, time and again, that those assertions must be credible in themselves, consistent in their vital and relevant details, and would not indicate any iota of falsity or perjury.

As a consequence, it behooves upon anyone making grave and injurious accusations, such as what the PNP and the PDEA had done against human rights groups, to immediately provide the requisite proof or details of the alliances with drug syndicates–that is, places, dates, and times of any meeting or meetings, what were talked about, how much money changed hands, if any–so no one could be accused of merely fabricating their allegations.

The way I see it, the officers and operatives of the PNP and PDEA are all Christians. That being the case, I am sure they are aware, whether generally or specifically, of one important command of Jesus to those who claim to believe in Him, which is found in Matthew 7 of the Bible about making judgments against another person.

This is what Jesus directed his believers to do: “…`Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

“ `Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye’…” Because people from the PNP and PDEA are intelligent enough, they know there is a penalty, down to their descendants to the fourth degree, for those who disregard this command.

 

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com

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