It is really up to Chito Gascon, head of the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to convince the Filipino people why his organisation deserves to be allotted more than 1,000 pesos this year. Congress, after all, are made up of popularly-elected representatives of the Filipino people. As such, their decision to grant this sum to the CHR is representative of what Filipinos want.
If one considers what the CHR actually do, 1,000 pesos is a princely sum. The CHR is, essentially, a redundant organisation. A third wheel. Its presence alone reminds Filipinos that theirs is an inefficient Third World nation — a society where you need watchdogs to watch the watchdogs who watch the police. The issue of “human rights” cannot be solved by kluges such as the CHR, however. It should be addressed by fixing law enforcement and the criminal justice system. But rather than focus resources on the root causes of social injustice and developing systemic solutions, somebody came up with the bright idea of creating the CHR.
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Opt into a paid subscription and you'll get premium insider briefs and insights from us. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
We can thank Cory Aquino’s 1987 Yellowtard Constitution for the waste of space that is the CHR. Because Filipinos were so high on anti-police and anti-military opiates back in 1987 following their “people power revolution”, they regarded their police and military as the problems and not the potential solutions that they should have been regarded as. So, the geniuses of the time thought, well, let’s throw in a couple hundred million bucks to employ permanent “human rights advocates” to watch over the police and the army. Unfortunately, instead of an objective advocate, what they essentially created was a political animal.
The CHR was, in short, born of politics and will, ultimately, die of politics.
Indeed, in hindsight, it is now easy to see that hatred for the police and the army is primarily politically-motivated. It is an outcrop of Martial Law Crybabyism — because the “victors” of that 1986 coup d’etat built their slogans on a rebellion rhetoric that demonises the police and the military. It is on that hatred that the CHR built its brand and value proposition — that Filipinos can run and make sumbong to them if they are harassed by state forces. Like shamans, priests, and fortune tellers, the CHR thrives in a society that believes in ghosts and superstition. When a society matures into a more secular and level-headed one, religion and shamanism are out the door. When Filipinos build professional police and military forces, the CHR is out the door.
Seeing that Filipinos are once again warming to the police and the army and are led by a president who puts their soldiers’ and policemen’s welfare above that of crooks and rebels, the CHR’s time to dismantle itself has come. If they don’t do it themselves, somebody will do it for them. It seems that Congress has taken that first step.
That said, what is a professional CHR chief executive to do? Simple. Don’t do what Chito Gascon is doing by being a crybaby about the whole thing. Gascon is a relic of a time when the CHR was a successfully-manufactured beacon of morality and, as such, goes about his job with a sense of entitlement. Under his watch (and predecessors who carried with them that same sense of entitlement), the CHR became akin to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) — an institution that remains too comfy with a sense of entitlement to a moral ascendancy they no longer possess. If the CHR is to regain its relevance, it needs to professionalise and disengage from politics. The police and army have done the same — perhaps not to the standards many of us would like to see it achieve, but are evolving nonetheless.
The same cannot be said about the CHR and its cousin in self-entitlement, the CBCP both of which have yet to shed their organisational cultures of moral pomposity and evolve into modern institutions that do not insult the intelligence of the Filipino people as a matter of routine.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
I agree 100%. Even P1,000 is too much for the useless, partisan yellow agency that the CHR has become. The CHR doesn’t care about human rights at all. They’re just using human rights as a tool for discrediting Duterte’s drug war and destabilizing the government.
As a taxpayer and law-abiding citizen, I want to say thank you to the House of Representatives for delivering the bitchslap to the CHR that I and many others like me have been wanting to land on Chito Gascon’s face since last year.
Like the PCGG, CHR has been around for 30 years. What has it achieved? Have human rights improved in this country? No. The human rights situation has actually gotten much worse since Cory Aquino took over in 1986. The only ones who benefited from the CHR’s existence are the yellow appointees whose pockets and political careers were fattened by the budget given to CHR. Leila de Lima as CHR chairperson was bad, but Chito Gascon took things to a whole new level. He practically turned the CHR into a full-time anti-Duterte PR agency, all for the benefit of his yellow allies in the Liberal Party. And all paid for by us, the taxpayers.
Enough is enough. Thank you to the 119 congressmen who stepped up to protect the interests of the Filipino people by putting a stop to Gascon and the Liberal Party’s shameless racket at the CHR.
If we really want to improve human rights in this country, we can start by dissolving the CHR and transferring its funds to better training and equipment for our police and soldiers.
What’s the use of spending hundreds of millions on an agency that does nothing except harangue the government in the media whenever a drug pusher gets killed in police ops? The CHR is all noise and propaganda. Why should we taxpayers pay for that? We already get that for free from Risa Hontiveros and Kiko Pangilinan.
To the senators who are lobbying to restore the budget of the CHR for 2018, think hard. That money can be put to much better use elsewhere to achieve the same objective. Create a new agency if you must. Because as long as Chito Gascon and his minions are in CHR, that money will just go to waste and be used for more anti-Duterte propaganda. Is that what you want? Are the secret yellows among you about to show your true colors?
At the very least, Gascon and his minions should resign as a condition for giving the CHR its 2018 budget. New people who are really independent and not focused on politicking and propaganda should be appointed to that agency so it can fulfill its mandate. Anything less than that is just not acceptable.
Why am I not surprised that you fucks here are gonna be behind this?
You don’t even bother to hide behind Duterte’s contempt for Gascon, whether that itself is pretense or not — you state more or less outright that abuses by the government and its police and armed forces must remain unchecked, for of course they only kick the shit and fleece the shit and shoot the shit outta the people they’re supposed to serve and protect for the good of us hard-headed idiots.
Well, fuck that, and fuck you.
@Pallacertus: Ah yes, the “fuck you” counterargument. I feel smarter already. 😀
To see an otherwise “expressive” commentator be reduced to a “fuck you” argument…
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe both.
@Pallacertus:
If the CHR would be fair on what they do then none of this would’ve happened. Unfortunately, under Gascon’s leadership, the CHR now turned into a shady political organization where they only go for selective cases to further their own political agendas.
All because of one Chito Gascon.
The Commission on Human Rights, does not do its job, as its name state. It was created by Cory Aquino, to “Witch Hunt” her political enemies…it is a political tool of the Aquino Cojuangco political axis , to harass, its political enemies. It was even used by the nymphomaniac and drug dealer, Leila De Lima; and her sidekick, the “Trililing” Trillanes, to witch hunt cases of Extra Judicial Killings, to impeach Pres. Duterte.
There are cases of massacres, during the Aquino regime era like the: Hacienda Luisita massacre, the Mendiola Massacre, the Lumad massacre, the Mamapasano massacre, etc…
Did the Commission of Human Rights, ever investigated, these murders, for the Human Rights of these murder victims ?
I urge that they will dissolve this ” Useless Office”, that is being used as a “Political Tool”, by the Aquino Cojuangco political axis.
I don’t want my taxpayer money to be wasted in this manner !
>> I don’t want my taxpayer money to be wasted in this manner !
You’d rather see it wasted in a hundred other ways, right?
ANOTHER article about the CHR? Come on. The CHR are guilty of nothing more than being toothless (they do not, as far as I know, have any power of enforcement), and that’s hardly their fault.
How about taking aim at some of the other pointless organisations that makes this country what it is? The country is awash with government-funded bodies with complicated acronyms and no apparent purpose. They all get a bit of tax money to squander on who-knows-what.
Or how about some of the departments that have real power and use it to drag the country even further into the gutter than it already is? The DENR, say, or the DPWH, or the BOC and BIR. How about the entire Barangay system, which is just a thinly-veiled cash transfer system for well-placed layabouts? There are so many big targets GRP could take aim at.
As for the CHR, there is an alternative to disbanding it: turn it into something important. Filipinos seem to forget that one aspect of human rights is the right of ordinary citizens to not live in fear of criminals and psychopaths. So give the CHR some teeth, and some honest, intelligent employees (yeah, I know, that’s the hard bit), and let’s see them deliver some results.
@marius: I sent you just now via email details of your new Contributor account.
Show us what you got.
If you are up to the challenge, that is.
I actually feel bad about the CHR, but not because of the budget. It’s indeed for that one flaw, its being toothless. It was debilitated by the very law that created it, the 1986 constitution. To give it teeth, you might have to touch the constitution.
marius:
If a government office, like the Commission of Human Rights is being used by political opportunists, like the Aquino Cojuangco political axis, to “Witch Hunt” its political enemies. Then, abolish the office immediately.
It has not proven its worth, other than being a Political Tool !
@benign0: I’d be happy to give that a go, but I do value my anonymity. So far, I’ve had two death threats and one narrow escape from actually being sliced up and dumped in the river (by the local “authorities”), which does tend to affect the way I express myself in public. I have no online presence to speak of.
This is not, I hasten to add, because I deal shabu, run a shady bar, or plot revolution. I just get on with my life and occasionally ask my neighbors to stop sabotaging that modest goal; which, as I’m sure you’re aware, is valid enough reason to invite murder, and everyone will just shrug and say, yeah, he had it coming.
I’ll see if there’s some way I can submit articles with complete anonymity and get back to you.
@Hyden: fair point, but as per benign0’s other article on the subject, you could level that accusation against 95% of government departments. The CHR, being powerless, cannot be much of a “political tool”. The CHR is a screwdriver with the handle missing. The BOC, on the other hand, is a chainsaw.
@ChinoF:
Actually, the CHR is mandated by law to investigate ALL kinds of human rights violations. But all I see right now is that they’re thoroughly one-sided, especially under Chito Gascon’s leadership.
@Marius:
As I had stated, the CHR is being used as a Political Tool , by the Aquino Cojuangco political axis. It is doing “Selective Investigations”, on killings, murders and massacres.
It focuses its investigations and “witch hunts” , on the political enemies of the Aquino Cojuangco political axis.
If the killings , massacres, killings and murders are done by the Aquino Cojuangco, political axis: it does not investigate…
We are paying them, with our taxpayers’ money. It is a scam by the Aquino Cojuangco family and political axis, in creating this government agency. It is being used , as their Political Tool …
We urge to abolish completely the CHR. Take note, fellow Filipino taxpayers, they are scamming Us …
They scammed us in the Katipunan Funds. They scammed us in the Hacienda Luisita. They scammed us in the : DAP, PDAF, Pork Barrels, Typhoon Yolanda Funds, etc…They continue to scam us in this CHR agency !
finally chr is done! now we need to make sure they get jailed and executed for treason. Next step is to kill all yellowtards especially who voted for mar roxas. they are all drug addicts and need to be eradicated in this society.
human rights is such a farce. we can all go back to when people are killing each other
Hyden: just because you state something doesn’t mean it’s true. Typical Filipino logic.
When it comes to being scammed, Filipinos are the ideal victims. You can tell them any old nonsense and they’ll believe it. I’m endlessly hearing stories about idiots who have sold the carabao to “invest” in some dumbass scheme. A year later they’ll do exactly the same thing again.
Tell Filipinos the truth, and they’ll accuse you of working for the CIA. Or kill you, like def there.
@marius:
It is up to the readers to determine, if I’m telling them the Truth or not. I always tell the Truth…
If they believe me: Thanks…because, they are using their common sense !
If they don’t believe me: then, it is their decision. I do not force anybody to read my blogs, or believe in me.
Why are you bothered with my blogs ? Does it hurt you, of what I put in my blogs?
Yellowtards! you are now being called to donate 5 per cent of your earnings for your cause. not us. we will donate ours to fight drugs, corruptions, and criminality.
>> Does it hurt you, of what I put in my blogs?
Hyden: Yes. it causes me physical pain to see human beings writing illiterate, illogical nonsense. It makes me despair for the future of the human race.
Why should people give their money to a gov’t agency when its head aligns himself with a political faction that is showing signs of involvement in narcopolitics?
Mmm, if CHR is redundant, which specific department has the supposed role of “protecting human rights” ?
no one can blame the yellow dynasty because when ninoy asking the pilipinos to oust marcos no one came to help him. they blamed it to the people. the edsa revolution is not enough, it’s too late.
@marius:
Truth hurts, especially, if you are a running dog of the Aquino Cojuangco political axis. And you cannot satisfy what they want you to do, to divert the issues of their evil deeds … You and they, just cannot stand the Truth of their evilness !
Are you now claiming that there was no case of military and police abuse during martial law? Get your head out of the sand please
@p0p0y:
Are also claiming that there was no case of military and police abuse AFTER the Martial law years and beyond, even after 1986? Take and eat your own shit please since you’re just here to TROLL on this site.
As expected from a Yellowtard like yourself…
Anything that just costs money is cheap.