MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews / 25 October)—Davao City First District Rep. Paolo Duterte was saying things out of context when he viewed the complaint of Grave Threat filed by ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro against former president Rodrigo Duterte as an attempt to silence his father from criticizing her.
“We all have the right to file a complaint against anyone in court. But public servants should not be onion-skinned and should not make use of this right as a tool to silence critics,” the congressman said in a statement issued Wednesday, a day after the filing of the complaint.
The statement did not cite the basis of Castro’s complaint.
Castro filed a complaint of Grave Threat against the elder Duterte under Article 282 of the Revised Penal Code and Section 6 of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 for the statements he made over a television program at Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI) where he expressed dismay about the House’s decision to scrap the confidential fund of his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte.
The elder Duterte said during the program that her daughter intended to use the confidential funds to address the communist insurgency through the revival of the Reserved Officers Training Corps program.
The Makabayan Bloc in Congress, where Castro belongs, strongly opposed the secret funds for the vice president during the budget hearings.
This apparently irked the former president that he picked on Castro during the SMNI program. “Ikaw France, kayong mga komunista ang gusto kong patayin [You France, you communists, are the ones I want to kill],” he said.
What the former president said was clearly a threat—and yet another instance of red-tagging—and I don’t know where his son got the idea that issuing threats has become part of criticism. His father overstepped the bounds and should be held responsible for it, if only to preempt the worst that could happen to Castro.
Was it just dark humor? Maybe. But not a few have ended up either in jail or in graves due to red-tagging. So, who can blame Castro for taking legal action against the Duterte patriarch?
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews.
H. Marcos C. Mordeno can be reached at hmcmordeno@gmail.com.)