Former president Rodrigo Duterte has turned the ongoing Senate blue ribbon committee hearing on the drug war as a platform for his usual expletive-laced rants, with support from his subalterns Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and Robin Padilla, among others. The proceedings have become a three-ring circus.
His statements on taking legal responsibility for the consequences in the drug war are part of his hubris-laden testimony. When asked about individual deaths, he would wash his hands of responsibility. Nothing new here – just the usual Duterte who curses through his answers when he squirms his way out of responsibility.
It is looking more and more that the purpose of the Senate hearings is to defuse the ticking bomb in the House of Representatives which, if allowed to reach their logical conclusion, would end up blowing up in the face of the Marcos Jr. regime. The current regime, after all, has not rescinded any of the policies that engendered the grave human rights violations that marked both the war on drugs and the counter-insurgency war under Duterte.
Unless the Senate is able to get the proceedings on track, its hearings will end up derailing the objective of determining and exacting accountability for the tens of thousands of killings under the war on drugs.