My own impression is that the competent authority will have to determine whether his claim of having ordered all the police operations that resulted in the reported killing of so many drug users is the unvarnished truth or is merely a storyteller's yarn meant to impress an impressionable audience. He sat in the House of Representatives as our elected representative; and he advocated the "outlawing" of typhoons to the amusement of his incredulous colleagues, long before some scientists started talking of how to control the weather. The old wizard is gone, but whenever I hear the statement attributed to the former president that he is personally responsible for all the acts of his policemen during his antidrug war, I am forced to think back of the old congressman: Why did his critics ever think he wanted them to believe any of his wild ideas when he himself did not believe in any of them. We need to know the basic facts first: how many were killed in the antidrug war; when and where the killings took place; who were directly or indirectly involved; what was the work of the police and what was the work of the vigilantes; and what was Duterte's personal involvement beyond everybody else. However, on March 11, at the behest of the International Criminal Police Organization, the Philippine National Police arrested Duterte at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport upon his arrival from a speaking engagement in Hong Kong and turned him over without adequate due process to the ICC, which hastily transported him to The Hague, where he is now detained. Read Full Story
