The victims of the depravities of drug-crazed killers and rapists likewise experience the same feeling of being deprived of due process whenever they recall images of their brutally raped and murdered loved ones and see the drug dealers and users who had been responsible still walking free anf victimizing more helpless people.
There is no perfect way of dispensing moral and legal justice. However when a brave and determined person tries to do this, in good faith though perhaps arguably flawed in the execution, should he be immediately stopped or should he be allowed to make corrections and improve his methods?
If the Philippines ever gets lucky to have a morally-correct president sitting in office and this president also gets lucky and is blessed with a morally- guided bureaucracy, cabinet members, legislators, mayors, governors, police and military officials and a heaven-on-earth situation, then we will be okay.
Until then, we just have to live and work with our elected officials and hope that we can somehow take the good with the bad, and count our blessings no matter how few.
Otherwise, Cardinal Tagle will have to call the morally upright and a sufficiently outraged citizenry to depose the incumbent and install the next series of presidents. And we might eventually get lucky and finally have a dream president with a dream government.
I understand the concerns and frustrations [of many people]. But what can I, or a bunch of due-process advocates do? Tell us and we will follow.
Otherwise, like most Filipinos, we’re giving Duterte a chance to make or break himself. Part of due process is, after all, the constitutional process of allowing elected officials sufficient time to grow in the job. We can’t impeach a president on the first move he makes with which we have moral issues, especially when there is no evidence that he has indeed ordered the moral breaches we THINK he has committed. Our moral judgement needs to go through a due process too, or are we exempt?
(Mr. Carlos Borromeo is a foreign correspondent based in San Francisco. We thank him for his brilliant opinion. He is a bona fide alumnus of Ateneo de Manila University.)