Immunity is impunity: Karapatan slams Duterte’s planned bid for VP run in upcoming elections

At this point, President Rodrigo Duterte’s agenda in his bid to run for vice president in the upcoming national elections is undeniably clear: he wants immunity as a shameless ploy for impunity. President Duterte knows that cases for his bloody crimes against the Filipino people are waiting for him once his term ends. He knows he cannot escape any of them, including the cases against him before the International Criminal Court.

At this point, President Rodrigo Duterte’s agenda in his bid to run for vice president in the upcoming national elections is undeniably clear: he wants immunity as a shameless ploy for impunity. President Duterte knows that cases for his bloody crimes against the Filipino people are waiting for him once his term ends. He knows he cannot escape any of them, including the cases against him before the International Criminal Court.

However, a vice president is not immune from any suit, which only makes his bid an insidious machination to secure the line of succession in the presidency — and presidential immunity — and to cement himself in power not only to slip away from accountability, but to also install his rotten dynasty and to continue his reign of fascist terror.

President Duterte’s desperation to run and secure the vice president post is evident, including his vow to bring “sackloads of cash” to support PDP-Laban candidates in the upcoming elections — a brazen admission of his plans to bribe his way to power and a shameless hubris as his administration declares that it has no money for additional aid for poor communities during the pandemic. Clearly, President Duterte cowers in fear in the idea of accountability: he will do anything and everything to escape it. It is also clear that the people must frustrate his devilish plans and end his tyrannical and murderous rule once and for all.

Cristina Palabay
Karapatan Secretary General