Some senators say that the budget of the CHR should be restored, because, no matter how people feel about the CHR’s current leadership, the agency is mandated by the Constitution to exist.
This is a flawed, overly simplistic argument. While it is true that the current law of the land decrees that the CHR should exist, the agency has failed to perform its functions PRECISELY BECAUSE it is headed by a brazen partisan like Chito Gascon. Gascon has been using the agency almost exclusively to advance the propaganda aims of the Liberal Party.
The P1,000 budget given by the House of Representatives to the CHR is not about abolishing the CHR per se, but about HOLDING GASCON ACCOUNTABLE.
Surely our senators are not so blind as to not see what Gascon has been doing. The man has been sending distorted data to international bodies to drum up support for foreign intervention to topple the Duterte government. The man has turned the CHR into a Liberal Party attack dog, dead set on discrediting the PNP and the AFP. When the Marawi crisis was just a few days old, Gascon’s CHR was already all over the media complaining about human rights abuses of the military, as if the military was the enemy and not the Maute/ISIS fighters. Gascon even used the CHR’s budget to fly in a foreign meddler, Agnes Callamard, so she can attack the Philippine government on our very own soil.
The government would be out of its mind if it gave another P600+ million budget for Gascon to keep doing what he’s been doing. Gascon needs to go. If he won’t leave voluntarily, then he should be immobilized. The P1,000 budget is one way to do this.
The House of Representatives has already taken the first important step to holding Gascon accountable. I hope our senators will do the same. Don’t be naive. If you’re saying you want to be faithful to the Constitution, then do what is necessary to make sure people like Gascon are immobilized so they can no longer misuse the resources of the CHR for their own political ends.
Know this: For as long as Gascon is in the CHR, the CHR will have no credibility. If it has no credibility, it might as well not exist.
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