Truth body told: Take no prisoners - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

Truth body told: Take no prisoners - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

Truth body told: Take no prisoners


By Amando Doronila
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:58:00 08/02/2010

Filed Under: Government, Graft & Corruption, Justice & Rights, Inquirer Politics


THE PHILIPPINE Truth Commission established by President Benigno Aquino III narrowly defined its mandate as “dedicated solely to investigating and finding out the truth concerning the reported cases of large-scale graft and corruption” during the Arroyo administration.

Executive Order No. 1 directed the commission to “put a closure” to these cases by filing “appropriate cases against those involved, if warranted,” and to render a comprehensive, final report on or before Dec. 31, 2012.

The definition of the scope of the cases the commission will investigate and the deadline for the submission of its report appeared to reassure that the fact-finding would not be open-ended and would have a closure.

The order ruled out reconciliation. It translated the Draconian code spelled out by Aquino in his inaugural speech: “To those who talk about reconciliation, if they mean that they would like us to simply forget about the wrongs that they have committed in the past, we have this to say: There can be no reconciliation without justice. When we allow crimes to go unpunished, we give consent to their occurring over and over again.”

In a word, the order to the commission is: Take no prisoners.

Aquino’s battle cry

The order said the commission “shall primarily seek and find the truth, and toward this end, investigate reports of graft and corruption of such scale and magnitude that shock and offend the moral and ethical sensibilities of the people,” committed by public officials and accomplices, including those in the private sector.

It armed the commission with powers that would enable it to recommend “the prosecution of the offenders and secure justice for all.”

The focus of the commission’s task reflects the main concern of the administration. The order emphasized that the President’s “battle cry” during the election campaign—“kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” (no one will be poor if no one is corrupt)—expressed a pledge that, if elected, he would end corruption.

The limited scope of the commission's inquiry was quickly noted. It excludes coverage of human rights abuses, the usual theme of the truth commissions established in several countries emerging from civil conflicts and in transition from authoritarian regimes to democratic systems.

The Philippines has one of the highest records of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial executions, during the past nine years.

A departure

The Philippine Truth Commission departed from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission model that had put more emphasis on reconciliation than on judicial retribution.

The Philippine model is a far cry from the models studied by Amnesty International, which reports that from 1974 to 2007, at least 32 truth commissions were established in 28 countries.

Amnesty reports that truth commissions have been established as official, temporary, nonjudicial fact-finding bodies to investigate the pattern of abuses of human rights and to establish the truth. Most concluded their work with a final report containing findings of fact and recommendations.

Wikipedia defines a truth or reconciliation commission as a mechanism tasked with “with discovering and revealing past wrongdoings by a government … in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past.”

They are occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship, Wikipedia says. It cites South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established by President Nelson Mandela after the dismantling of apartheid. It considers the South African commission as a popular model whose results have rarely been achieved in other commissions.

Philippine model

Truth commissions are sometimes criticized for allowing crimes to go unpunished and creating impunity for serious human rights abusers.

But the Philippine model, which studied other models, including those in Latin America, does not mandate an investigation beyond corruption cases.

According to Wikipedia, the South African commission was a court-like restorative body. Its public hearings were seen as a crucial component of the transition to a full and free democracy in South Africa.

This is not the case in the transition from the Arroyo to the Aquino administration, which has underlined corruption as the most critical issue of Philippine democracy.

Amnesty applications were received by the South African commission. The amnesty requests covered the human rights abuses by both the white apartheid regime and the black African National Congress.

The amnesty aspect is widely perceived as responsible for the success of conciliatory approach in fostering unity in post-apartheid South Africa. While the approach did not result in prosecutions, it is acknowledged to have produced national catharsis.

Nuremberg way

There is still debate over the success of the South Africa model versus the “Nuremberg method” used in prosecuting Nazi war crimes after the defeat of Germany in World War II. The Nuremberg tribunals set up by the Allies in occupation zones sent a number of Nazi dignitaries to the gallows.

Denazification was a sweeping political culture purge “to rid German society, culture, press, economy, judiciary and politics of any remnants of the Nazi regime.”

Truth commissions are established in the context of political transitions in certain political systems. The context determines the shape of the commission’s mandate and scope of the inquiry.

The cases in point are the truth commissions established in the transition of certain South American regimes—for example, in the case of disappeared persons in the Argentinian military coup d’etat in 1979, and in the overthrow of the Marxist regime of Salvador Allende in Chile in the 1973 coup d’etat by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

No coincidence

The context determined the nature and scope of the inquiry into the human rights atrocities of the Argentine junta by the commission set up by the democratic regime of President Raul Alfonsin after the fall of the junta following Argentina’s defeat in the Falklands War.

Alfonsin, upon being elected president, repealed the military amnesty that had been declared before the military leaders left office, and asked for the prosecution of nine junta leaders.

Mr. Aquino’s truth commission was not established in the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. The new administration took office in an election widely recognized as free and legitimate.

The President’s order has armed the commission with powers to subpoena witnesses and legal weapons that would help it to discharge its mandate to make a report and recommend prosecutions.

Its report has to go to the Office of the Ombudsman, which has the power to initiate prosecutions.

It’s not a coincidence that the presidential order directs the commission to submit a report by December 2012, by which time Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez is due to end her constitutional term.

While she stays as Ombudsman, Gutierrez can throw a spanner in the works to derail the efforts of the Department of Justice to build up corruption cases catalogued by the President in his State of the Nation Address.

But the screws are being tightened in another line of attack on the Ombudsman—the new impeachment case filed against her in Congress.