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Hotel Intercontinental, Makati City
23 February 2010
delivered by
LEILA M. DE LIMA
Chairperson, Commission on Human Rights
MESSAGE
Our partners and friends in human rights and integrity, Excellencies, our guests and presidential aspirants, good morning.
The current election season underscores the most outstanding feature in the tradition of Constitutional Democracies, and that is, the People's capacity to direct change. The ability of Filipinos to decide for themselves to change the course of our nation, this is the feature of our own democracy that is at center stage now.
Change comes in many forms when we speak of our democratic processes. It comes in the form of many pieces of legislation, that seek to interpret and carry out the intent of our fundamental law. Yet Constitutional provisions are deliberately written in broad form, capable of reinterpretation, in conformity with the tide of times.
Change also comes in the ability of determined legal advocacy and jurisprudential development to shape the evolution of rights and obligations as enshrined in every conceivable statute. Law, including the Constitution, is malleable and must bend and conform to the best interests of the People.
One of the most incendiary political issues is the propriety of changing the national charter itself. Whether the issue extends itself to amendments, revisions, or the prudence or imprudence of either, none of these overcome the indelible characteristic of our Constitution – that we, as a People, and only in the most genuine of political mobilizations, may decide to alter the fundamental law of the republic.
Today's event, however, is not about these varied modes of change deeply embedded in our democratic way of life. It is about only one mode, the most sacred of modes which distinguishes democracies from all other legal traditions, and that is, the People's right and duty to elect its leaders, the right of suffrage.
In this year's elections, the theme of change beckons us once again. Amidst the pageantry and debates, and the uniquely raucous Filipino electoral exercise we experience every three and six years, every single one of our presidential aspirants will peddle the word “change” to the People. It will be packaged in the most common forms familiar to our elections – a change from impoverishment, from hunger; a change in policy to achieve more hopeful and bolder economic growth targets, a change in fiscal management, in taxation policy; a change from an overwhelmed judicial system and law enforcement; a change in the peace process and from national disunity.
Before the public may lose their way in the disarray of promises to be peddled, we must place special regard to urgent changes, which are so fundamental, so primary, and that we must earnestly enact now. To ignore these will undermine any platform for any other change, no matter how sweeping, or comprehensive these platforms may be. We need a change that returns human rights to its rightful place as the cornerstone of all our national aspirations. We need a change that places a premium on integrity to human rights and to every national platform based on our human rights.
The Nexus Between Human Rights, Corruption and the Presidential Platform
The nexus between human rights and every campaign promise is hardly debatable. Every promise to uplift the Filipino people, to improve governance, to sharpen policy and to consolidate political will to assiduously implement promises of change, ultimately redounds to human rights. Human rights are not narrowly limited to the common issues tied to anti-insurgency operations, such as torture, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Human rights extend to all things in human activity – sufficient food, habitable shelter, a healthy ecology, freedom of expression, a free media, peaceful assembly, the right to security and safety, the right to information, the right to equal protection before the law, to obtainment of justice and vindication of rights, and to be free from any impediment, impairment or suppression of these rights and an entire gamut of other rights. Every promise made in an election is a promise to uphold one or several human rights. Every promise, at its very core, is a promise not to give gratuitously, but a promise to give what is unmistakably demandable from the government of the People.
To the presidential aspirants, your platform cannot be couched in any other terms except that of human rights. It is inevitable, whether you are aware of it or not.
In the same breath, the nexus between human rights and corruption is neither debatable. It is beyond any doubt that corruption has a negative impact on human rights and conversely, fighting corruption enhances human rights.
Corruption itself cannot be limited to the vast system of influence peddling, pecuniary irregularities, favor and rent-seeking. At its very core as well, corruption is not just an abomination to orderly transactions, it is a lack of integrity to human rights. There is corruption that not only raises transactional costs, but also betrays dutiful public service. There is corruption that is not only quantified in terms of money lost, but is evident in the qualified and immeasurable suffering of our people. There is corruption that undermines all campaign promises, all administration agenda, all national policies, and ultimately, erodes all human rights and all hope.
Our country's consistent failure to effectively address corruption has always been our government's understated abandonment of not just plain integrity and ethical conduct, but ultimately, also our People's human rights. Every instance of corruption, large or small, levies a lead weight on demandable rights and services, and when added up, we are left with only our compromised human rights. And there is no hope for desperate change if there is no promise to address human rights and all forms of corruption.
But, please do not speak so lightly, so narrowly of human rights and corruption. These two issues cover the breadth of any plan, any platform that you can conceive. And if the rhetoric carelessly spoken today about a human rights and anti-corruption agenda remain just that, pure rhetoric, then your victory will be a devastation to the change you advertise, the hope you vend, and a blow to the Filipino people.
Ampatuan, Maguindanao Massacre:
The Most Dreadful Exposition of Corruption as a Human Rights Violation
We need not dig too deeply to understand how the tendrils of corruption grow well past initial parties to it, and explode into a nightmare of human rights degradation. Maguindanao is now in the national and global spotlight in the wake of the most gruesome election-related violence we had ever had to witness. Yet the underpinnings of the violence are steeped in a protracted scheme of corruption. Without delving into too much detail, we are aware of corruption that manifested itself as electoral fraud with political repercussions that extend beyond the local politics. We know of the corruption that allowed the massing of private armies, the accumulation of DND weapons and ammunition in the hands of private militias. We know of the corruption that has perpetuated the impoverishment of the people of Maguindanao while the local political elite bask in opulence and ostentatious wealth. And of course, we are all familiar with how all of these led to an atmosphere of impunity and barbaric gall, which in turn led to the brazen murder of dozens, possibly hundreds of civilians during the term of the ruling clan.
The Ampatuan, Maguindanao Massacre is an exposition not just in extrajudicial killing, not just in the perilous livelihood of journalists. It is more about human rights than is apparent on the surface. It is about poverty, thievery, election fraud, impunity, and wholesale terrorism of a population. And our suspicions, yet unconfirmed by any adjudicatory body, are that corruption, the mortal enemy of human rights, is at the core of it all. There had been corruption in the checks and balances over the local government, in the treatment of improprieties and crimes, corruption stubbornly pervading over the years, afflicting the people of Maguindanao.
Our worst fears on how corruption can deal a death blow to human rights had come true in Maguindanao. It had come true before, in another era superseded by the current generation of relative freedom. And if we are not careful, the affliction of Maguindanao can be replicated several times over throughout the country until we return to pre-1986, where human rights were arguably, at their lowest point.
Maguindanao and the long shadow it casts on human rights must be the impetus for our people to choose leaders who understand the breadth of implications that corruption has over the integrity of our human rights.
Epilogue: The 2010 Elections
As we await the coming elections in May, we must inevitably look back to the years that had passed under the current administration. We had seen many bold steps forward in the human rights agenda, but we had also seen some of the worst of times for human rights protection and governmental integrity. 2010 is a milestone, a marker for reflection, and a reminder that much more change awaits us if we are to secure the full enjoyment of human rights in our country.
In the chaos of our elections, it seems fitting that we in public service, and you, our presidential candidates, must remember the import of our democratic mechanisms that allow for change. In the electoral process, it is the people that wield the power to shape our national destiny, not the elected aspirant. It is the voting public that ultimately bares the burden of choosing what must change. Our candidates only represent the changes that our People desire. And where our People has consistently clamored for the protection of human rights, be it in the form of objections to impaired freedom, abject poverty, festering corruption and a long list of others, our candidates must represent these objections and the solutions to them.
If there is any integrity that we must emphasize, it must be your integrity to the platform you present, a platform that must be imbued with the sacredness of our human rights. Time and again, within and outside of the electoral context, the People have made known their disdain for corruption, for poverty, for governmental ineptitude, for politicking, for long-winded but meaningless rhetoric about human rights. Do not, now, rob them of their voice. Do not rob them of their choice and their vote by speaking before us about a human rights and governmental integrity agenda disjointed from what can or will actually be done.
We are looking forward to what could (or should) be the cleanest elections hopefully in our history by way of automation. Can we make it the most meaningful as well – where not only are the proclaimed winners the same ones voted for, but where the values, human rights, principles, and changes that the people value for themselves are the same ones that become an integral part of the new administration? First, may we know what values, rights, principles, and changes our candidates stand for? And second, may we know how devoted they will be to these?
When we know these for sure, only then can we measure the meaningfulness of the 2010 elections.
Sa ating mga kandidato, good luck po sa inyong lahat!