FORMER President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday skipped the 9th hearing of the House Quad Comm that is looking into extrajudicial killings (EJKs) linked to his bloody anti-drug war, among other issues.
Lead committee chairman Rep. Robert Ace Barbers of Surigao del Norte wrote the former President last Oct. 18 to invite him to attend the inquiry “to provide valuable insights and shed light on the issues under discussion particularly on extrajudicial killings.”
Barbers, who chairs the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs, furnished Duterte with a copy of the agenda.
However, on Monday, Duterte’s lawyer Martin Delgra lll wrote Barbers that his client, the former President, could not attend Tuesday’s hearing because he was not feeling well.
“Unfortunately, despite his keen intention to attend, my client respectfully manifests that he cannot attend the public hearing set on 22 October 2024. Aside from the short notice given him, my client just arrived in Davao from Metro Manila last 17 October 2024. Considering his advanced age and the recent engagements he had to attend, he is currently not feeling well and is in need of much rest. Hence, my client respectfully requests to defer his appearance before the Honorable Committee scheduled tomorrow (Tuesday),” Delgra said in his letter.
He assured the joint panel “of my client’s willingness to appear before the House of Representatives on some other available date, preferably after 01 November 2024.”
Delgra served as chairman of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board during the Duterte administration.
On the eve of Tuesday’s hearing, Barbers and his three Quad Comm co-chairmen said they expected the former President to attend the inquiry, take his oath to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and answer questions, unlike his daughter Vice President Sara Duterte who skipped recent committee and plenary deliberations on the 2025 budget of the Office of the Vice President.
They said they would like to hear him comment on testimonies linking him to the August 2016 murders inside the Davao prison of three high-profile Chinese drug lords and the explosive revelations of senior police officers close to him, including former colonel and Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office general manager Royina Garma, who confirmed the existence of an EJK reward system that paid up to P1 million for every high-profile drug suspect assassinated.
It was retiring police Lt. Col. Jovie Espenido, the Duterte administration’s poster boy on the war on drugs, who disclosed the reward system.
Espenido said the scheme was funded by collections from jueteng and other illegal gambling activities, Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs), intelligence funds and proceeds from PCSO’s notorious small-town lottery operations.
He said the money “flowed from the level of (Duterte close aide) Sen. Bong Go.”
The Quad Comm chairmen said they would also like the former President to talk about an alleged meeting he had, also in 2016, with senior police officers in which the EJK “Davao template” or model was discussed.
A few weeks after the meeting, the drug suspect killing spree by rouge policemen and riding-in-tandem hitmen started in Metro Manila and other parts of the country.
For human rights committee chairman Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr., he would like to hear in particular Duterte’s explanation on the need to kill suspects in his administration’s anti-drug campaign.
“Bakit kailangang patayin yung suspect? Bakit kailangang pumatay ng libo-libo, mahigit na 20,000 suspect?” he asked.
More than 20,000 is the estimate of human rights groups, though the official count of the Duterte administration is about 6,000.
However, human rights lawyer Chel Diokno told Abante’s committee in June this year that in the first 17 months of the Duterte administration alone, 20,322 drug suspects had already been killed.
“There has been much debate on how many persons have been killed in the war on drugs during the last administration…But there is one number that is unassailable because this comes from the Office of the President and was cited in an extended resolution of the Supreme Court,” Diokno said.
“And that number is 20,322 persons killed in the war on drugs. That number of 20,322 persons killed is only from the period of July 1, 2016, up to November 27, 2017. This is found in the 2017 year-end accomplishment report of the Office of the President and was cited in the resolution of the Supreme Court of April 3, 2018,” he said.
