News Roundup 04 June 2022
Jun 04, 2022 • 5 min Read
A pathologist, a priest and a hunt for justice in PH | INQUIRER.NET – The same day Aurora Blas found her husband’s body in a Manila funeral home in 2016 with a bullet hole in his head, she signed a document provided by the mortician saying pneumonia had killed him. That decision has haunted her. She couldn’t afford an autopsy, so she agreed to the lie in order to bury her husband. Like others who lost loved ones in the surge of vigilante-style killings in the Philippines under President Duterte, Aurora said she was compelled to accept a death certificate that failed to acknowledge what everyone knew: Her husband was shot dead by unknown assailants, another casualty in the nation’s drug war. Nearly six years later, Aurora’s desire to set the record straight has brought her to Raquel Fortun, a forensic pathologist at the University of the Philippines (UP) Manila. With the consent of the families and the help of a Catholic priest, Fortun is examining the exhumed remains of some of the poorest drug war victims to document how they died. “It’s definitely not pneumonia,” said Fortun, as she identified a gunshot hole in the exhumed skull of Aurora’s husband. Human rights groups claim that Philippine police and vigilantes under their direction murdered unarmed drug suspects on a massive scale on Duterte’s watch, allegations that authorities have denied. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last year announced it would pursue an investigation of suspected crimes against humanity; it estimates that somewhere between 12,000 and 30,000 people were killed between July 2016 and March 2019. Mr. Duterte’s spokesperson has said his government “will not cooperate” with the ICC investigation, claiming it was “legally erroneous and politically motivated.” The Philippine government, whose drug war death tally runs through April 2022, officially acknowledges 6,248 deaths. Mr. Duterte, who has steadfastly defended his drug war and denied any wrongdoing, is due to leave office on June 30 when his six-year term expires. In a statement to Reuters, his office said the administration’s “relentless” fight against illegal drugs had produced significant accomplishments and it was confident the country’s justice system was working. Now, in an improbable turn of events, the poverty of families upended by the killings has led to new evidence of potential misconduct. In the Philippines, grave spaces are typically rented for five years. If a family can’t afford to extend the lease, the remains are exhumed and transferred to a mass grave or cremated. Leases are starting to come due for drug war victims and some families have agreed to Fortun’s offer to examine the remains. Fortun does most of her examinations in a cramped campus stockroom on tables she sourced from a junkyard. When the stockroom fills up, she uses the morgue at the UP medical school. She does not advertise her services and no one funds her work. For 11 months, Reuters shadowed Fortun, the priest and families in their hunt for justice. The news agency also photographed remains of some of the deceased and reviewed official documents, including death certificates and police reports. Reuters found that the official death certificates of at least 15 drug war victims did not reflect the violent manner in which police and family members said they died. Those death certificates said the deceased had succumbed to natural causes such as pneumonia or hypertension instead of saying they were shot.
Lozada’s fate ‘an indictment of PH justice system’–Lacson | INQUIRER.NET – From an accuser to an accused to a convict facing a maximum of 10 years in prison: The fate of whistleblower Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada is an indictment of the Philippine justice system, according to Sen. Panfilo Lacson. On Twitter on Friday, Lacson said the case of Lozada— who surrendered to the National Bureau of Investigation on Thursday in the wake of the Supreme Court’s affirmation of his graft conviction over a land deal involving the state-owned Philippine Forest Corp. (PFC)—“shows the unbalanced scale of justice in the country.” “Never mind the ‘guilty verdict’ for graft which he committed as CEO of the [PFC]. It’s the dismissal of the NBN-ZTE cases that tilts the balance,” the senator lamented, referring to the controversial and ultimately scuttled national broadband network deal between the administration of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the Chinese company ZTE Corp.
Philippines registers lower quality of gov’t, democracy after nearly a decade — governance index | PHILSTAR.COM – The country registered a lower quality of government and democracy in 2019, compared to its scores nearly a decade before, according to the latest Berggruen Governance Index (BGI). BGI’s latest report, released days ago, showed that the Philippines’ state capacity or quality of government fell by around 13% to a score of 39.8 in 2019, compared to its level in 2010. State capacity refers to the “ability of the government to achieve its primary goals, including generating revenues, organizing collective actions and fulfilling its commitments,” BGI said. In giving a score to the Philippines’ quality of government, the index considered factors such as tax administration, state-society relations, and absence of public sector theft, among others. According to the BGI, the country also scored lower in terms of its quality of democracy in 2019 at 60.6, slipping by around 14%, compared to its level in 2010. The quality of democracy or democratic accountability refers to the “ability of locals to check the government’s power and demand the state to justify its actions through electoral, institutional and societal means.” Some factors in determining the country’s quality of democracy include judicial oversight, suffrage, media freedom and freedom of expresion, among others. The BGI did not give any detailed explanations on what exactly caused the decline in both the country’s quality of government and democratic accountability over the past decade. The country fared better, however, in terms of providing public goods for its citizens, after scoring 65.5 in 2019, higher by about 14% versus its figure in 2010. Public goods cover both goods which citizens do not compete over, like clean air; and those which are partially excluded such as basic medical care and education. The BGI is a collaborative project between UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Los Angeles-based independent thinktank Berggruen Institute. It looks into the relationship between state capacity, the provision of public goods and democratic accountability. Over 20 years, BGI has evaluated more than 134 countries, including the Philippines. BGI says its data is a “powerful tool for policymakers, researchers and the public at large to analyze and improve government effectiveness.”
